I move as an unopposed motion—

When the debate was adjourned last night I had pointed out that the speech made by the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) yesterday amounted to nothing else than integration in education in South Africa. According to him all races in South Africa should receive the same education, in the same atmosphere, and under the same umbrella. His approach is that education is universal and that all children in the whole world should be educated identically alike. But the hon. member forgets that education can only be successful and can only produce full-fledged citizens if it is a continuation of the spirit and the atmosphere in which the child of every race receives his education at home. Because races differ the spirit and often also the method of education will of necessity have to differ to conform with the standard of civilization, the spiritual composition and the particular requirements and nature of each race. Just as only a South African can penetrate to the heart and soul of a South African child only a Dane can penetrate to the heart and soul of a Dane, a Britisher to that of a British child, an American to that of an American child, an Indian to that of an Indian child, a Bantu to that of the Bantu child and a Coloured to that of the Coloured child; that is obvious and that is what this measure envisages.

Nonsense.

That hon. member reveals the greatest ignorance possible as far as education is concerned. What this measure envisages is to give that opportunity to the Indian child in South Africa. Education will now be taken to the Indian child by members of his own community, of his own race and in an atmosphere in which the Indian child will feel at home. Spiritually he will be equipped to become a full-fledged member of his community and he will be able to serve that community where his services are required.

The hon. member for Hillbrow also asked whom the hon. the Minister had actually consulted, suggesting thereby that there would be opposition on the part of the Indians. But when they gave the Indians the franchise in the forties, when they wanted to give the Indians the municipal franchise, and when they wanted to remove the Indians from the Common Roll whom did they consult? They did not consult the Indians with the result that the Indians rejected that plan of their holus-bolus. I just want to point out that when Bantu and Coloured education was taken over the United Party, together with some Coloureds and some Bantu, also opposed those measures and we must expect the United Party once again to succeed in leading some Indians up the garden path temporarily. We must expect that but according to the success we achieve that opposition on the part of the Indians will disappear. However, I predict that the opposition on the part of the United Party will continue. They will persist in their opposition in spite of the fact that the Indians will be satisfied with the education offered to them.

The hon. member for Hillbrow also accused us of coming forward once again in this Bill with a piece of apartheid ideology …

The Minister said so himself.

… of which we had become the slaves. Of course it is part of our apartheid ideology; we have never denied that. It fits completely into the framework of our apartheid policy. But the position is not as suggested by the United Party, namely, that this is a miracle from heaven which has enslaved us with magical power. This apartheid ideology is not a shadow or a ghost as the hon. member for Hillbrow is always suggesting. On the contrary it is an ideology which has crystallized from experience, goodwill, the humanitarianism of the South African nation and from the course of history in South Africa. The apartheid ideology of which this measure is merely a single facet is a constructive ideology; it is not an empty shadow; inherent in it is happiness, opportunity, peace and happy co-existence of all races in our fatherland in contrast to the racial friction, the living together and the hamshackle politics of the United Party.

The hon. member for Hillbrow has done Natal a disservice by opposing this measure. A heavy burden is being taken off the shoulders of the Provincial Administration of Natal, a burden which has prevented Natal in the past from providing the White child with all the necessary facilities. According to the hon. member for Hillbrow Indian education has never been a problem as far as Natal is concerned and that we should have waited for Natal to petition us to take over.

I did not say that.

I distinctly heard the hon. member say yesterday by way of interjection that it was not a problem and I now want to put this question to him: Can he mention a single member of the Executive Committee in Natal who is opposed to the taking over of Indian education? Can he mention a single United Party member of the Provincial Council of Natal who is opposed to the taking over of Indian education—just one? No, he cannot do so, Sir. We should very much like to know who they are. I want to put this question to the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell): Has Indian education never been a problem to Natal? Will Natal not benefit by the taking over of Indian education by the Central Government?

Will the Natalians now pay less in taxation?

The only people who are opposed to this measure are the United Party members of Parliament particularly the United Party M.P.s for Natal. I say they are doing a disservice to Natal by opposing this measure. I submit that the Natal Provincial Administration is relieved that Indian education is being taken over. The hon. member for Hillbrow has also done the Indians a disservice by wanting to deprive them of the right and the opportunity of sharing fully in the extremely important role in their community, namely, the education of their own children. I can assure him that the Indians will not be grateful to him for his extremely unwise action. The hon. member has also done South Africa a disservice by sowing suspicion while the White people of South Africa are busy bringing about peaceful co-existence in South Africa and winning the confidence of the non-Whites of South Africa. He has done South Africa a disservice because while we are trying to overcome the hostility of an unenlightened world he, as a front-bencher, as one of the senior members in the front benches of the United Party, makes a most reprehensible and most irresponsible statement to the effect that we on this side of the House hate everybody who is not White; that we want to establish separate departments for the Bushmen, the Afrikaansspeaking section and the English-speaking section. It is no good the hon. member trying to create a gulf between the Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking sections in South Africa by spreading scare stories—those days are past. I just want to say that the hon. member yesterday revealed the mind of a stateless, nationless and universal person.

In conclusion I just want to point out what Dr. Worrall, lecturer in political science at the University of Natal, said in respect of the attitude adopted by the United Party towards the apartheid ideology of the National Party and towards this measure because this measure is part of that ideology. Dr. Worrall sent out 300 questionnaires containing 14 questions to the English-speaking readers of English-language newspapers in the Cape Province, Natal and Johannesburg. He received 300 completed questionnaires back and he then came to the following conclusion—

He says this in regard to the survey—

There are various reasons for this of which I want to mention the following one—

Then he gives this advice and in conclusion this is also the advice this side of the House wants to give the United Party—

He finally gives this advice to the English-speaking people—

Let that be a lesson to the United Party.

Before going on to deal with one or two remarks made by the hon. the Minister I would like to deal with the point that was raised by the hon. member for Vryheid (Mr. D. J. Potgieter) who has just sat down. May I say in passing that so far as the hon. member for Vryheid is concerned we have seen how he succeeds in making interesting a matter of no substance whatsoever; I must give him full marks for that. He can say something of no consequence, of no substance and he can make it sound very interesting indeed, and that is shown whenever one reads his Hansard afterwards. I think the hon. member could write a lovely book as long as he is allowed to romance, as long as he did not have to stick to the facts.

In regard to the point that he made concerning the members of the Executive Committee in Natal, may I say to him that they were all against this Bill, and that was the official decision of the Executive Committee which presumably included his Honour the Administrator of Natal who does not belong to my party; so that when hon. members on that side speak in this debate about the cooperation of the various Executive Committees they are in a sense quite right. The Executive Committees of the Provinces have not been informed of the Government’s decision to take over Indian education. The Minister sought their co-operation and they have given their co-operation; the Minister will not deny that. The Minister would be in a terrible jam at the present time, for example, if the Provinces had turned round to him and said: “You are going to take away Indian education from us. Take it away, but take it away now.” Instead of that they are co-operating and they are allowing the Minister to wait until 1 April next year before he takes over. Why is that? The hon. the Minister is taking a great number of the staff dealing with Indian education into his Department. Does he see anything wrong with that staff that he is taking into his own Department? Why does the hon. the Minister always find it necessary to criticize his own province? He never finds anything good coming out of Natal. Is the only good thing that ever came out of Natal a Minister of Bantu Education and a Minister of Bantu Affairs? Why does the hon. the Minister not show a certain degree of humility and realize that the province that he is representing here, through his constituency, is a province that has much good about it …

They are getting better and better.

Because the Minister has the authority of the Government behind him he can take this power away from the Provincial Administrations if he wishes to do so. The force of law and the authority of Parliament is not in question, but it is quite wrong for the hon. member for Vryheid to come along and say that this is being done with the approval and with the support of the members of the Executive Committee of the province. The hon. the Minister cannot deny it. He knows that they have been against this Bill all along. Sir, I want to take the Minister’s memory back to a couple of years ago when I suggested to him that I would offer there and then to give him the control over Indian education and asked him whether he would be prepared to take it. He refused. I have never seen a man so confused; he blushed, he twisted, he turned, he sat there dumb, looking the other way, he scratched himself; he tried to find out what the answer was but he could not make up his mind. The one thing that he did not want to have was Indian education. He was prepared to do anything except give me a straight “yes” or “no” and to say, “I am prepared to take over Indian education here and now.”

I will quote your words and I will quote mine and you will then swallow what you have just said.

No, that was the position at the time when the offer was made. The Minister did everything except come to the point and say: “Yes, I will take it over.” What he was waiting for was a time which was going to be expedient, and he is in exactly the same position to-day, and until that time comes he is leaving the whole of the burden of Indian education resting on the province; it is still the financial responsibility of the province to-day. The hon. the Minister knows that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with education as far as Indian education in Natal is concerned. The hon. member for Vryheid has said categorically that this is part of the apartheid plan of the Government. Yes, Sir, it is politics, it is not education. There is no foundation whatever for an assumption that this step is designed to do something better in the way of education for the Asiatic people of South Africa. [Interjections.] Sir, I want to come at once to the hon. member for Prieska (Mr. Stander) who has just interjected. If I remember correctly it was the hon. member who said last night that the Asiatic people had no cultural background, no history like ours and that it was impossible to take our Western educational system and weave these Asiatic people into our system of education. He said that they could not be brought into it; they had their own culture, their own educational system, their own way of life in the countries they came from.

As good as yours, anyway.

Sir, that is not the point. It does not matter whether the one is as good as the other. That is what the hon. member said and he does not deny it. Sir, what then is the substance of this education that we are giving the Asiatics in this country if we cannot weave them into our educational system? What education are they getting at the present time? And indeed, is the Minister in agreement then with the hon. member and is he going to give them an Eastern education based on Sanskrit ideas or on any of the other ideas which form the underlying basis of education in India? Do not the Indian people in India to-day base their new educational system, under their latest five-year plan, on Western educational forms? Of course they do: the hon. the Minister nods his head. Then what happens to the hon. member for Prieska? He should nut his tail between his legs and creep out of this House in shame for having made such a statement. The point is that in this year and age we have to give what is called a Western European education to all our people, whether they are Bantu, Asiatics, Coloureds or Whites.

Do you call that education?

Of course I call a “Western European education” education. It is the form of education which has produced the foremost scientists and the foremost developments in the whole of the civilized world in this time and age.

The position here, to come back to the Minister, is that what he is doing now is to play politics. He is not interested in education. This has nothing to do with education. The hon. the Minister knows perfectly well that if there has been a deficiency, not in the content of education, not in the quality of education, but in our capacity to give education to the people who needed it—and I am now dealing with Natal particularly—it arose from the fact that our resources were inadequate. If the Minister had wanted education in Natal for the Asiatics to be in conformity with the best possible development of those who could benefit by that education, the mass of the Indian people, those who were not getting that education to the best of their capacities at the present time—they have the ability, they have the intelligence and the brainpower, but they could not get education because there was a limit fixed and that limit was a limitation in financial resources—and all the Government had to do, as it could have done in dealing with Coloured education, was to provide the necessary money and that education could then have been given to the fullest possible extent.

The fact of the matter is that the Coloured people did not get it and that the Indian people have not been getting it, and it is a matter of financial resources. The hon. the Minister tells us that when his Department has taken over, when this new Department which is being created has taken over Indian education, the Indians will have new avenues opened to them; they will be able to get posts in the Department; they will be able to become inspectors, etc. Sir, that is all very well and nobody objects to that, if that is the policy of the Government, and I can see nothing wrong with that aspect of it. But, Sir, what of the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of the children themselves who are to get the education? Do they get anything more than what money could buy under the existing circumstances if education was left with the provinces? Do they get anything more than that?

There has never been an inquiry into Indian education in Natal that has shown that the quality or the content of the education is wrong or that it is lacking in any way or that there is something which could have been done on a different basis with a resultant improvement in the education which was being provided for the Indian children within the limits of the available resources. If there was any such idea it has never been made public. What then is the Minister taking over? He is taking over a growing concern which has an excellent record and which has suffered from one defect only and that is lack of money which he, as Minister in charge of Indian affairs, was in a position to remedy if he had gone to his colleague, the Minister of Finance, and if he had arranged for the necessary money to be made available. But, of course, as the hon. member for Vryheid has already explained, that is not the position at all. There is no such assertion. This is pure politics. This is the Government’s policy of fragmentation. They are fragmenting our country; that is their policy; it is not being done by chance. They are now fragmenting our economy; that is their policy, and they are now fragmenting education.

And the United Party.

I wonder what is being left in the form of any single line of, approach to the public of South Africa, of all races and colours, which is going to create a common loyalty to a common country from which we all spring. One of the strongest possible links that we could have had in our country was a common educational system, a system where education was taken completely out of the realm of politics, particularly party politics. Under this Bill teachers are forbidden to participate in party politics and I may say in passing that I am not quite sure why they are forbidden to participate in party politics; why they are not forbidden participation in politics?

It seems to me that here we have a curious use of the word, but whatever the reason may be—and there must be a differentiation in the mind of the Minister otherwise he would not have used that language—as far as the education of our children is concerned, we should have a system divorced entirely from party politics, divorced entirely from politics of every kind, except so far as it may be necessary to teach them civics. All the children of our country could have been brought up under one educational system with one educational aim and object, and that in a country which was the common country to all of them, whatever race or nation in South Africa, as the Minister’s colleague now chooses to call it. they have sprung from. Sir, this fragmentation is creating a grievous weakness in South African society because, as I say, it follows on the fragmentation of our country and the fragmentation of our economy. If the time ever comes when we indeed and in fact have four nations standing alone and separate, then if one nation is in trouble the other three nations are likely to say: “That is your trouble, we are not interested; do not call us South Africans.” They will say: “We are not interested in your troubles because we are standing separate and aloof from you.” Sir, the educational tie is one of the strongest ties that could have been woven by any Government, if it was careful, for the maintenance of the internal security of South Africa and for promoting a common patriotism in South Africa. Where is the common patriotism under these circumstances?

Sir, we have no time for this Bill; it is a bad Bill. No case has been made out for it whatsoever. The Government could only have made out a case for this Bill if it could have shown that the educational system to-day is lacking in something to the detriment of the education of the child and that the system which the Government is proposing now is a system whereby that weakness is going to be removed, and that under the new system proposed by the Minister there is going to be a better education for the children concerned. I say again without any fear of contradiction whatsoever that it matters not and it should not matter to Parliament what the colour is of the child getting the education. I am a conservative and the hon. the Minister knows it. [Interjections.]

I am a conservative much more than hon. members opposite who are the new liberalists of South Africa. Sir, I say every child in South Africa, irrespective of race or colour, is entitled to receive the best education possible, and if that could have been achieved by increasing the resources of the provinces, then that was the way to do it. There is no justification and there was no justification for taking away the powers of the provinces which, in the case of my own province—I repeat—has objected to it and has voiced its objection in the only manner possible to the Minister when he made his approach to it. On that basis therefore we must say that the Government is again playing politics here, as it has done in other educational matters. There is no single issue in South Africa to-day, which is covered by the blanket of the Government, but the Government plays politics with it somehow or other. In every single walk of life there is the finger of the Government with a political crinkle on it; it gets sticky as it snoops around to find some political issue on which it can focus its intention and where it can try somehow or other to score a political point and the entrance of that Government finger into this realm of education is one of the worst and the most dangerous so far as the future of South Africa is concerned.

The hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) asked whether it was not our intention to give the Indian population a Western, European education. I shall return to this point at a later stage in my speech but I just want to point out now that there is more to education than simply its subject content, and that people are also educated according to the group of which they form part. But, as I have already said, I shall return to this point at a later stage and also to the statement of the hon. member that he is conservative. I shall return to this conservatism later.

What is the position in connection with the various race groups in our country? We have different State Departments for those race groups, State Departments which have been set up to deal specifically, and in certain cases, exclusively, with the interests of these people. For example, we have the case of Bantu Administration and Development. This Department was established to look after the interests of a specific group and the work which it is doing for that group is that it is developing the group’s homelands either industrially or agriculturally, and is also giving attention to the settlement of communities, whether those communities are in the Bantu homelands or whether they are Bantu residential areas in the White area of South Africa. But when communities are established, regard is also had to the welfare of those communities. Provision is made for their health services, social services, for social intercourse, sporting facilities and so forth. But when we speak about the settlement of communities and all the interests of a community which have to be seen to, it strikes us that there is one important aspect which I have not yet mentioned and that is the education of that community. In the case of the Bantu we know that Bantu education has already been placed under the control of the specific Department which looks after the interests of the entire community. A Department of Coloured Affairs was brought into being recently for the Coloureds, a Department which is improving the education of that group. Sir, education is very important; it is probably the most important factor to consider when one is building up a community and is developing communities, particularly when one has to deal with communities which are undeveloped or are perhaps under-developed to some extent either as a result of level of civilization or as a result of certain economic factors. Education cannot be removed from the development programme or from the development process of such community; it is the keystone. It may be argued that that side of the House does give attention to education in the building up of these communities, as is at present the case in Natal where attention is being given to Indian education, but the question is whether the best that can be done is being done in regard to that education. The education of such a race group comes into its own when the development and the building up of that race group becomes the responsibility of a State Department. The establishment of communities and everything connected with those communities is the responsibility of a State Department but the important instrument for the promotion of this development, education, is in the hands of the Provincial Administrations. And so a very important instrument in the building up and development of communities is, as it were, being taken away from those communities as well as from the State Department which has to make provision for that development.

Do you also want to remove control over White education from the provinces?

The important question is whether there is co-ordination between one’s aims in the development and building up of that community and the aims which one has in regard to its education. After all, these two things cannot bypass one another; there must to some extent be a common purpose. The one cannot go in one direction, where a certain point is aimed at, and education in another direction. There has therefore to be a central authority which controls all the development and education and which determines the direction of these two things jointly, otherwise they will bypass one another; otherwise education will to a large extent lose its purpose in respect of that community. There must to some extent be some measure of integration of aims, the aim of development and the aim of education, and there must be a central authority to reconcile these two trains of thought. I take it that that side of the House is also in favour of the development and building up of communities under these State Departments, as I have just explained, and that, more specifically too in the case of the Indians, they are in favour of that group being developed and built up as a separate entity, the Indian community whose way of life, culture, religion, traditions and customs cannot be given the same treatment as those of the Whites—a separate entity, therefore, which one develops and for which one must provide education as well. If then it is true that hon. members opposite also want that group to develop as a separate entity, why do they seek to withhold a most important instrument like education from these people and from the Department of these people? The hon. member for South Coast has said that he is conservative. Does his conservatism go so far as to make him want the Indian and Coloured communities to be developed as separate entities as well? And if this is the case, why then not use their education to enable them to be developed properly so that the education and development streams are complementary to one another? It seems as though he with his conservatism does want them to be developed as a separate entity in respect of certain matters but he withholds education from them, education which is the most important instrument in this development pattern. Why then is education being withheld from them? Is it because education has such a great influence upon that community and because it is a formative factor for the whole community? If one takes education from them and does not link it up with their development, one will actually be undermining that conservatism which the hon. member professes, and in the long run that separate entity which they can form will come to nothing. Various objections have been lodged against this Bill. The same objections were lodged in respect of Bantu education and Coloured education. In this case too it will be proved that most of those objections were unfounded.

Let us enumerate a few of the positive things which this legislation will provide for the Indian community and also for education as such. The first point I want to mention is this: This step is to the benefit of education as such. At the moment Indian education is shared by the Provincial Administrations of Natal, Transvaal and, to some extent, the Cape. Each one of these Provincial Administrations, in their education departments, deals with Indian education, in this specific case, in the light of their experience, as they have progressed with it empirically over the years and as they have even experimented with it over the years. There is separate planning; there is no co-ordination and there is no joint, immediate and eventual aim as far as Indian education is concerned. Such an arrangement simply cannot have any good effects for the education of these people.

What about the Whites?

We are dealing with Indian education; we shall probably have an opportunity to discuss White education at a later stage. This new set-up creates the possibility for better co-ordination in which we shall, as I said at the start, be able to include the other instruments in the entire development process of these people. It follows logically that because the higher education institution, the university college, and the technical institutions and vocational institutions are already under the control of a State Department, the primary schools, high schools and special schools should also be under the control of a State Department because here too there must be better co-ordination. There must be better co-ordination from the higher levels to the lower levels of education or from the lower levels to the higher levels of education. If there is better co-ordination and planning, Mr. Speaker, it will also be apparent in regard to the choices of subjects and courses which are offered. There have been many complaints that the Indians concentrate chiefly upon commerce and that even their training is directed in this vocational direction. There have been many requests that these people should enter broader vocational spheres and that their training should be aimed at enabling them to do other kinds of work as well. The hon. the Minister pointed out that there is a very limited choice of subjects; that this limited choice of subjects leads, inter alia, to a high failure figure. All these things are to the disadvantage of the pupil, and if they are to the disadvantage of the pupil they are obviously to the detriment of the whole community. There is a too large measure of sameness in Indian education. No community can lay claim to a specific occupational direction and these people must also receive education which will enable them to follow other forms of employment. I believe that this Bill will make it possible for these people to follow other avenues of employment.

The hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) told us yesterday that by introducing this Bill we were placing people in separate and narrow camps. Exactly the opposite is proved when we wish them to make a living in the broader spheres of life. It is not our intention to segregate them in a narrow way; we want to create better possibilities for them and open other avenues of employment for them. I have said that this is to the advantage of education as such. It is also to the advantage of the pupil as such and so it must be of even greater advantage to the whole community. If the Bill is passed and we can achieve what I have just mentioned, we will be giving those people, as the hon. the Minister said yesterday, more opportunity for employment at administrative level and also in additional posts on the inspectorate of the education division of the Department. The Indians will be able to have a share in their education and in their education programme from the parents who will serve on school committees to the people with a more professional education who will serve on subject committees and so forth. These people will have more opportunity to have a share in their education. So, in reality, as was said yesterday, this is education for the Indians by the Indians.

I want to conclude by mentioning another matter to which the hon. member for Hillbrow referred yesterday. He accused us of fragmenting education. He even said in passing that the day would probably come when we would have separate education systems for Afrikaans and English-speaking people in South Africa. The National Party is the party which divides and the United Party is the party which tries to promote unity! We are always being accused of breaking down and we are told that the United Party are the great apostles of unity and the building of unity. I have here a pamphlet which was issued in Natal during the recent provincial elections. Let me say right at the start who it was issued this pamphlet. It was issued by two candidates who stood in Natal, Mr. John Lepaan in Ixopo and Mr. Gary Tracey in Zululand. These two gentlemen refer to the fact that the United Party make themselves out to be the great apostles of unity, to be the people who are always saying that we must bring Afrikaans- and English-speaking children together in the schools so that they can learn to understand one another better. These two gentlemen refer to parallel-medium schools and they have this to add—I want to use this as a basis for my argument—

Order! What has that to do with the Bill?

Mr. Speaker, I am dealing with the accusation that we are engaged upon a process of fragmentation. It is not a process of fragmentation. We are accused by people who are always posing as the builders of unity and who say that we are not promoting unity at all. These two gentlemen refer to certain percentages of children at parallel-medium schools in the Transvaal, the Free State, the Cape and Natal. They say that in Natal, strangely enough, the smallest number of children is to be found at those schools in which there is the opportunity to bring the English- and Afrikaans-speaking children together.

Order! The hon. member must now come back to the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a process of fragmentation. This legislation which deals with Indian education does not bring about fragmentation. We cannot be accused by that side of the House of driving people apart while for 55 years hon. members opposite have had the opportunity of bringing the two groups together in Natal.

I want to conclude on this note. Messrs. Leppan and Tracey have said that an amount of R1,000 can be claimed by anyone who proves that their facts are wrong. As far as I know, nobody has as yet claimed that R1,000. If these facts are wrong, the hon. member for Hillbrow can claim that money.

At the beginning of his speech the hon. member for Germiston (Mr. Cruywagen) told us that education should be adapted to the various communities and that this legislation was an example of that principle. He also said one should ask oneself the question whether the best had been done for the Indian race under the existing system? The hon. member for Germiston makes a big mistake. He thinks that when you are dealing with the Indian and Coloured communities you are dealing with people who never come into contact with the White community. He thinks one can speak as though there are clear lines of demarcation between ourselves and those communities. Had we had the position in South Africa where there was complete territorial separation between us and the Indians, one could have said their education should be adapted to their own community. But that is not the position in South Africa to-day. The hon. member ought to know that the lives of the half million odd Indians in South Africa, with the greatest number in Natal, are intertwined with that of the White man. We have the same position as far as the Coloureds here in the Cape Province are concerned. The hon. member has mentioned all the wonderful advantages that will flow from this legislation. He said education would benefit by it. He said it would cause the Indians to follow new professions and that they themselves would now play a role in their education. Those were the good points mentioned by the hon. member; he tried to be constructive. But everything he said could have been said by anybody in 1910 when primary and secondary education was allocated to the provinces. You could already at that stage have held out the wonderful picture as to what education could mean to South Africa. It is no argument, therefore, to tell us what wonderful opportunities it offers the Indian child.

The hon. member for Vryheid (Mr. D. J. Potgieter) said we were actually doing Natal a big disservice by opposing this legislation because this legislation removed a heavy burden from the shoulders of the people in Natal. I want to ask the hon. member for Vryheid or any other member on that side of the House whether the fact that Indian education is to be taken over by the Department of Indian Affairs will mean that any taxpayer in Natal will pay less taxation in future? They advanced precisely the same arguments when Coloured education was taken over by the Department of Coloured Affairs. But the money had to be found by that central Department. This Indian education is not going to remain suspended in mid-air; it will have to be paid for. Who will pay for it?

The White man.

The Whites; the taxpayers; the Indians; every taxpayer will have to pay for it. In what way are you relieving Natal of a burden? It is really ridiculous for that side of the House to come with that argument. It is necessary for us to reply to some of the superficially clever remarks made so far by that side of the House about the attitude of this side of the House. The hon. members for Vryheid and Prieska (Mr. Stander) alleged that the attitude adopted by this side of the House proved that we were moving along the entire road to integration. This party has been in power in Natal for a long time and are there integrated schools in that province? This is the first time I have heard that was the policy we followed in Natal. However, hon. members opposite argue that it is our policy to move forward along the road to integration. These things are simply said in order once again to spread the story in the world that the United Party advocates miscegenation and the mixing of the races. Hon. members opposite say this legislation is an example of separate development. It is separate development in respect of which one can ask: Whereto? Where does this separate development, of which this legislation is an example, lead to? Surely the hon. the Prime Minister has already told us that the Indians constituted a permanent minority group. What good purpose will be served, therefore, by cultivating leaders amongst them according to this policy of separate development, because they will ultimately find a ceiling above their heads. If this legislation is an example of giving a more definite shape to the policy of separate development it will not, with a view to what the hon. the Prime Minister has already said, only mean frustration and disappointment of the Indian in future? He will be able to lead his people up to a certain stage; he will be able to be of value to them up to a certain stage but no further because a ceiling will be placed on his separate development. We are told in winged words that this is a new set-up, that this is a new era which has dawned for the Indian. With a view to the new meaning which has been given to separate development I want to know what it will mean to the Indian because there it no separate freedom for him? Why can they not obtain everything under the existing setup? They cannot enjoy separate freedom. A ceiling will be placed above their heads. Why can they not develop to the extent they wish to develop under the existing set-up? No legislation and no policy can be more dangerous than those which hold out the most wonderful possibilities to a national group as hon. members opposite are doing in this legislation, without bringing them to fruition. It is extremely dangerous to hold out all these possibilities without making those possibilities a reality. The furthest they can progress with their separate development will be to have their own group areas and perhaps a few rural towns exclusively inhabited by Indians. It is suggested that this legislation will bring about consolidation in the education of this national group and that it will be of great benefit to them. That is the position today as far as our White primary and secondary education is concerned? There is no consolidation. It is true that they are striving at uniformity; they are striving to attain the same objective in White education but there is no consolidation. One can advance the same argument in respect of White education, Sir. One can just as well argue that because it is controlled by different provinces it is ineffective. Because there is no consolidation as far as White education is concerned it does not follow that it is ineffective. Hon. members opposite now argue that because there will be consolidation as far as Indian education is concerned it will be so much more effective. Hon. members refuse point blank to tell us whether White primary and secondary education, which is in the hands of the provinces to-day, will be taken over by a central authority. In other words, they are quite satisfied that White primary and secondary education is sufficiently purposeful and uniform; they are quite satisfied that it is sufficiently effective. I do not follow the argument of hon. members opposite that consolidation will be good in the case of Indian education but not in the case of White education. The hon. the Minister himself said in his speech that he wanted to retain diversity in education.

The hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) accused us, particularly Natal, of having neglected the Indian.

I read what the Indians themselves had said.

Yes, the hon. member read something about how seriously the Indian child had been neglected in Natal. I want to ask the hon. member for Pretoria (East) who the Administrator of Natal is? Who was the previous Administrator of that province? Who were the Administrators over the past seven/ eight years?

Who serves on the Executive Committee?

The Administrators were chosen by them. The Government appoints the Administrators as head of that province. I cannot for a moment believe that they would appoint people of a calibre who would allow Indian education to be neglected in that province.

One can ask the following question in connection with this legislation: Which powers will ultimately be left to the provinces? If the Government continues to act the way it is acting to-day …

Order! That has nothing to do with this matter.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out that education has been a matter which the provinces have had the right to handle. We are busy whittling down those rights of theirs …

That is a totally different matter.

The Provincial Councils will no longer control these matters. They are becoming nothing more than adjusted and slightly glorified municipalities.

One can ask another question: Is the reason why this Department is taking over Indian education because we have a Department of Indian Affairs to-day which is absolutely of no value? It has not been able to produce any tangible results. Must the Department now try to create work for itself by taking over primary and secondary education which was formerly in the hands of the provinces, education which might just as well remain where it is to-day?

The language chosen to introduce this legislation and to justify it was choice, hopeful and held out wonderful expectations to the Indians for the future. It is very easy to do that. It is the easiest thing in the world to be constructive and to say what it would mean to the country in future. As I have said, it has been presented as the dawn of a new era. One immediately asks oneself this question: Since when has the Government suddenly developed such a predilection for the Indians? That is an entirely new development. They apparently want to save the Indian child from the claws of an unscrupulous United Party which has actually done him an injustice all these years. As the hon. member for Prieska has said the Indian child has been discriminated against. If the Government has undergone a change of heart it is none of my business. One would welcome that but then one must ask oneself this question: Why in the process, is the accusation levelled at the people of Natal, that they have never done justice to the Indian child? The Government, and the hon. the Minister in particular, must remember that they are now in honour bound towards the Indian community and that the Indian community will keep them at their word. Similar promises were made to the Coloureds. They were told that they would be able to become inspectors, that there was not a post in Coloured education which they would not be able to fill but the first opportunity arose to appoint inspectors and what happened? The majority of inspectors of Coloured education appointed were White and only a small number Coloured.

You are discussing a matter you know nothing about.

The hon. member for Piketberg (Mr. Treurnicht) is not the only person who knows something about Coloured education. A further question I want to ask is this: Is that also the road the Indians will have to follow although their academic qualifications are of a higher standard than those of the average Coloured?

The hon. member for Prieska told us repeatedly that we all accepted that the Indians formed a permanent part of our nation and that that was the reason why this step had been taken. I now want to know this: Will the emphasis, in his education, be placed simply on the service he can render his own group? If that is so, Mr. Speaker, we are once again cultivating a divided loyalty in South Africa. Or will the Minister place the emphasis, in the education of the Indian, on his loyalty towards South Africa? I believe that, in order to make a success of Indian education, it ought to have a strong South African character. If we do not do that we shall once again be creating a second-class citizen who will be more of a liability than an asset to South Africa. I am convinced that there are sufficient signs amongst the Indians that they are desirous of being of greater service to the country than they have been hitherto. This legislation once again places the accent on group consciousness instead of placing it on what is in the interest of South Africa and on what is the best way of creating South Africanism. That is why I reject this legislation.

I just want to make one remark in pursuance of an accusation made by the previous speaker against the Bill. His fear was that by the creation of a sub-division of education in the Department of Indian affairs the Government would be promoting a second-class population group in this country. This proves how little he knows about the real essence of education because education in all its facets is the training which is given to form and uplift the immature and bring them to maturity, to enable them to comply fully with the requirements of the community. Education as it is being given to the Bantu and the Coloured to-day and as it will be given to the Indian in terms of this legislation, means nothing but this. It is untrue to say that this legislation will make a second-class citizenry of the Indians. All education is aimed at the upliftment of backward national groups, not at their humiliation.

It is very clear to me that the opposition of the United Party to this Bill once again shows all the characteristics of their actions on various other occasions when they have backed the wrong horse and have opposed matters which have been basically good for this country. They did this in the past in the economic sphere when they opposed the establishment of industries like Iscor and Sasol, industries which would be basically sound for the country.

Where does this Bill mention Sasol?

It makes no difference; I just want to indicate the principle of the opposition to this Bill. Hon. members opposite have on various occasions opposed extremely necessary legislation, as they did when this Government decided that it was necessary to place the Coloureds on a separate voters’ roll, and now the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) says that it was a good thing.

Order! The hon. member must not go to extremes in his examples. He cannot mention the history of the whole country as an example.

Mr. Speaker, I submit to your ruling. I just want to indicate that this opposition is characteristic of the actions of the United Party in this House. They have advanced no sound arguments as to why this Bill should not be placed on the Statute Book. I should like to neutralize a few of the accusations which have been made during the course of this debate. During the debate it was said by hon. members opposite that this Bill could be called a Bill for “baasskap” education. This is interesting, to my mind, coming from a party which, in its policy in respect of the Bantu, lays down permanent White supremacy, and believes moreover that the non-White representation in Parliament will be permanently restricted to a minimum.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to analyse a few more of these accusations and then I shall come back to the Bill. The hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) said that this measure would bring about the further fragmentation of education in our country. I on my part regard this measure as a step towards better co-ordination because co-ordination under one Department is, after all, a positive step towards greater unity in administration. Specific education as it has to be applied in respect of a specific population group in our country ought, after all, to fall as a whole under one specific Department. The hon. member for Hillbrow even went so far as to compare it with the caste system in India. He ought to know that when we speak of the caste system we mean the sharp differences which exist between various sections of the same people. There are race differences among the population groups in South Africa which are completely different to the caste system in India. There have always been points of contact in the administrative sphere between the White, the Coloured, the Bantu and the Indian. It is the White official who maintains contact with Indian education in the school and in the administrative sphere. It is the White teacher and professor who teach at the schools and universities which the Indians attend who form an official liaison between White and non-White. It is therefore a far-fetched argument of the hon. member to talk of caste separation in education. The hon. member for Natal South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) said that the Government in India is carrying out a five-year plan to orientate education in that country along Western lines. What difference does it make that they are doing so? This simply proves that a Western system of education can be applied in India, which is hundreds of miles away from Europe. Why then cannot it also be applied here in our country by the Department of Indian Affairs? We are already applying it here. The present system is based on Western ideas of education. We will not look to India for an education system to orientate our Indian education along Eastern lines. That is not necessary. If the Indians in India can orientate their education along Western lines it will be far easier for us to apply our own principles, our Western principles, throughout as far as Indian education in our own country is concerned.

The hon. member for Hillbrow devoted a good five or ten minutes of his speech towards trying to convince us that the transfer of Indian education from the provincial administrations to the Department of Indian Affairs would result in a difference in status in the curricula. He said that the standard of the curricula would be lowered thereby and would differ from that of the Whites.

I did not say that.

The hon. member made this point very clear. The Joint Matriculation Board controls the curricula for Matriculation and the Senior Certificate as far as Whites and non-Whites are concerned, and it will also control the examinations for the Indians. It does not necessarily follow therefore that there should be a difference in status or in standard as far as the curricula are concerned. Another accusation was made by the hon. member for Rosettenville (Dr. Fisher) who said that the hon. the Minister wanted to build a small empire for himself by incorporating everything dealing with the Indians under his Department of Indian Affairs. That is a far-fetched accustion. If there are matters which have to be placed under a certain Department, and they are centralized under a specific Minister, does this mean that he is creating an empire for himself, that he is seeking a control monopoly? These far-fetched arguments are proof of a total lack of sound political judgment and of sober vision and perspective on the part of the United Party. This is the reason why they are rejected at elections from time to time.

Order! That is not relevant.

I want to come back to the Bill. This Bill is simply a logical result of the fact that a separate Department of Indian Affairs has already been established. Because of all the commitments and responsibilities of the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs and his Department, it is obvious that as important a matter as the education of Indians cannot be omitted. It fits in naturally. The pattern which is being followed is the same as that which has been followed in connection with Bantu and Coloured education. The accusations which were made in the past in regard to the position held by non-White education in our country were to the effect that Bantu and Coloured and Indian education were all sorry and neglected appendages of White education. Indian education in its present connection is even called the outrider of White education in the provinces. The National Government has already unhitched the Bantu and Coloured education trailer from White education. This was done in an orderly and dignified manner, and this education has already been hitched to the tow-rope by means of which their own teams of officials from the various Departments will lead them along their own paths to their own destinations. These are the facts. This is the aim of the Government in regard to non-White education and it has already been highly successful in this direction. The non-Whites, particularly the Bantu, accept this system. Teachers and educationists praise it as being sound. A great deal of progress has been made. What the Government intends doing now is also to unhitch Indian education from White education and to place it on its own track with its own destination. The idea is obvious. There are four population groups in South Africa which co-exist within the borders of the same country. I do not hesitate to put my point of view in regard to the Indians. It is a disappointing fact to my mind that the Indian has to stay in our country. As far as I am concerned they should have returned to their original homeland shortly after the completion of their service here as labourers in 1860. But this did not happen. Favourable opportunities which were created were not used and I believe now that the same feelings which exist in the heart of the hon. member for South Coast in regard to the problems which he will have to face in Natal and which we will have to face throughout the country in respect of the Indian in the future, exist in my heart. But we must accept the fact, and I am compelled, no matter how difficult it may be, to accept the fact that the Indian has come to stay. It is the duty of the Government and of the Opposition to ensure that legislation is placed on the Statute Book for the orderly arrangement of the administration and determination of the future direction in which this specific Indian element must develop.

Order! That point has been made repeatedly. The hon. member must advance new arguments.

I shall leave that point. Because of the sharp differences which exist between the four population groups it is necessary that there should also be some measure of difference as far as the method of education is concerned in order to be successful in the four-track development of these four groups. The Opposition must admit that the Government has succeeded in this experiment. Why should the Government not be equally successful with this step? What is basically wrong with the policy in terms of which Indian education is at this stage to be transferred to and co-ordinated under one State Department? A separate Department of Indian Affairs has already been established. It already has at its disposal the necessary machinery for the promotion of the interests of the Indians in three provinces, and education is, after all, one of the most important matters to be undertaken by such a Department. It would be unnatural to exclude it. We cannot begrudge the Indians what we give the other two population groups. It would be unjust and unrealistic to provide that Bantu education should be undertaken by the Department of Bantu Education, and Coloured education by the Department of Coloured Affairs, but that Indian education should remain a permanent appendage of White education. At the moment there is no clear pattern for Indian education in South Africa. As an appendage of the provincial departments of education there is also little prospect that a clearly defined and recognisable pattern and character will ever be given to Indian education. The approach of the various provincial departments to this matter is too diverse for this to happen—that is to say, the education departments of the Transvaal, Natal and the Cape. Indeed, it would also be expecting too much of the officials of the various departments of education, which are fashioned mainly on the last of White education, to devote adequate time to and concentrate upon looking after Indian education and to remain continually aware of the particular requirements of the Indian community.

Order! That point has been made repeatedly. Has the hon. member no new arguments to advance?

Mr. Speaker, a sub-department of Indian education within the framework of the Department of Indian Affairs will, after all, concentrate specifically upon the promotion of Indian education. Divided control does of necessity result in a divided pattern which can only be fatal. The Government is following a clearly defined and positive policy in respect of the control of non-White education in South Africa and may therefore not neglect on the part of the Indians what it has successfully applied in respect of the other race groups. The Indians are a heterogeneous national unit, more so even than the Coloureds, and it would be unrealistic and unfair to establish a department and yet not to transfer the question of education to the control of that department. The pattern in terms of which education has been promoted in South Africa has always taken the form of different, separate departments, provincial and central, within the scope of the jurisdiction of the Central Government. What then is the objection of the Opposition to the establishment of a separate division of education under the Department of Indian Affairs? What is wrong with giving Indian education the same status as that of the others and administering it on the same basis? The pattern is not a foreign one; it fits in with the recognized, traditional South African system of education. It has been tested and accepted and works very well in practice. It is noticeable, Mr. Speaker, that the Broom Commission which was appointed in 1937 to make recommendations in connection with Indian education in Natal, recommended a separate sub-department for Indian education. In its report it mentioned a number of reasons why there was such a backlog in connection with Indian education in Natal. The Commission described one of the most important shortcomings as follows—

The Commission stated that the lack of an effective education tradition among the Indian community was the most important reason why the necessary progress had not been made with Indian education in Natal. This legislation establishes the necessary machinery for the creation of an Indian education tradition without which it will never develop its own character.

I want to conclude by summing up as follows: This Bill ought to be supported not only by those of us on this side who accept it as being logical and correct, but also by the Opposition because it is positive and progressive progress in respect of the rounding-off of the South African education pattern as a whole. It is only Indian education which is still an appendage of the larger, broader institution of White education. In the second place, it is a complimenting and an expansion of the activities and duties which fall logically under a separate Department of Indian Affairs. Thirdly, it is simply a co-ordination of Indian education which is to-day still being controlled by the various provinces in an ineffectual and haphazard way. Fourthly, it creates the opportunity for the Indian Council gradually to show a greater interest in and responsibility in respect of the education of its own people. Lastly, this Bill envisages the creation of an independent Indian education system with posts for Indians not only in the education sphere but also in the administrative and professional spheres. It will ensure that Indian education will cease to be an appendage of White provincial education and will place that education on its own level of development where it will be able to promote an effective Indian national education tradition of which the Indian will in the future be proud because he will be compelled gradually to have a greater share in it and to accept increased responsibility for it.

The hon. member who has just sat down, will forgive me if I do not deal with his speech. I came in in the middle of his speech and missed the trend of his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I always have believed that education should know no colour bar, and on that principle I was opposed in the past and will continue to oppose any separate education for any separate group of people who are nationals of our country. The hon. Minister has indicated in his opening address on this Bill that it is based on the Bill previously introduced in regard to Coloured education, and I hope at a later stage to deal with some of the clauses in this Bill and I intend to show that some of these clauses should be amended as they have not been practical even as regards Coloured education.

I would like to confine myself mainly to the Indian position in the Cape. Representatives of Natal have spoken for their province, but the position in the Cape is entirely different. There are very few Indians in the Cape Province. I do believe that they are integrating so fast with the Coloureds and the Malays that probably in the next 20 years we will find no Indians in the Cape Province at all, or very few. Sir, I am told by leaders of the Indian community that in the Cape the Indian children go to Coloured schools.

Who told you that?

There is no necessity for duplication in the Cape of education for the Indian child and for the Coloured child. According to the Press the hon. the Minister said that “in the Cape Indian children attended the schools for Coloured children”. That is correct. Then he continued “as a result of the creation of separate residential areas for Indians, separate Indian schools should be established”. Now I think it is quite unnecessary to do so. The hon. Minister must know that there is an embargo on Indian women coming to South Africa. They are not allowed to come in. The Indian men are marrying mainly Malay women or Coloured women, and their children will also marry within that group, with the result that in the near future the Indian community in the Cape Province, or the Cape Peninsula at least, will probably be completely integrated in the Coloured group and the Malay group. So there is no necessity to introduce in the Cape Province separate Indian schools, because they can go to the Coloured schools to which they go at the moment. But let me take another instance of duplication which is completely unnecessary. I want to refer to vocational training and technical education. Does the Minister intend under this Bill (he has the power) to establish technical colleges for the Indian children?

We have a most excellent technical college for Coloured pupils at Athlone. Does the Minister think it is wrong for Indian children to go to that technical college to get technical training? Surely there is nothing wrong in that? If the hon. Minister is going to refuse these Indian children to be admitted at the technical schools for Coloureds, then in fact I would demand that we do establish technical colleges for the Indian people. But it is completely unnecessary. The hon. Minister would have to establish special separate institutions at every level. I want to ask the hon. Minister whether he has visited the University College at Bellville. It has grown tremendously. You have a considerable number of graduates who went to that university college. Are you going to duplicate the university colleges as well? Are you going to establish a university college for Indian children in the Cape? I want to know. Does he think there are enough children to justify the creation of a university college for Indian children in the Cape Province?

Are you speaking as a representative of the Coloured people?

Sometimes the hon. member asks an intelligent question.

This one is very intelligent.

Yes, this is one of the rare occasions. Now I want to explain to him that I represent the Indians and the Coloureds, because the Indians are Coloureds for the purpose of the Separate Roll. The hon. member apparently does not know and he is their legal adviser! I want to spare the hon. member further blushes. For the purpose of elections in the past, the Indians were Coloureds.

Do you now represent the Indians?

The Indians in the Cape are on my roll.

Did they vote for you?

The hon. member must not run away now. He was trying to create the impression that politically in the Cape there is a difference between the Indian and the Coloured man.

You represent the Coloureds.

The Indians too, all the people who are on the roll. The hon. member knows the position.

The hon. member should return to the Bill.

I am entitled to say to the hon. Minister that for all practical purposes the Indians have been regarded as Coloureds in the Cape Province. Politically they are Coloureds. They are on the Coloured roll. Why duplicate for a very small minority in the whole of the Cape Province? I am referring to vocational training, technical training, university colleges. The Minister has the power to duplicate in those spheres. In his opening speech the hon. Minister only spoke about Coloured schools, and he gave as a reason that when the Indians will be herded together in their group areas, an Indian school will become necessary in such an area. I can understand that. But is the hon. Minister going to establish vocational training in that group area? Is he going to establish a university college for them in that group area?

If there is a sufficient number.

But there are not sufficient Indians. So because of lack of numbers, the Indians will be denied vocational training?

No.

Where will they go?

Where they are going now.

They go to the Coloured schools. They will be denied university education because of paucity of numbers? Where must they go?

To Durban.

All the Cape Indians, because of lack of numbers, have to go from here to Natal to study because there will not be a university college for them in the Cape.

So have the Transvaal Indians. There is no college for them in the Transvaal either.

Will you allow Indians from Natal to come to the Cape to study?

Order! The hon. member should address the Chair.

I want to indicate to the hon. the Minister and to the House that as far as the education of the Indians of the Cape is concerned, how does he expect the Indians here to send their children to Natal to receive university education? What about the expense?

This Bill does not deal with university education.

Where are they to go for technical education? Will they go to the Coloured technical schools, yes or no?

Read what I said in my opening speech. I said that in the Cape the position would remain as it is until such time as separate schools are justified.

I accept that, but I want to know about the technical colleges. After they pass Matric., if they want to go in for technical education, where do they go?

Where do they go now?

That is my point, that you are unnecessarily going to introduce a division of education which you will never carry out anyway, because of the reasons the Minister has just given us. He will not establish these technical schools or a university college for the Indians here because of paucity of numbers. I think the Minister will have to think very hard to get out of this point.

That is beside the point. I am not taking over anything in the Cape at the moment.

Then what about the principle of the whole thing?

I accept the Minister’s statement. He thought I had not read the Bill, but I have. Clause 37 says—

The hon. the Minister has protected himself as far as the Cape is concerned because he knows he does not have it in mind, and I want to ask what has therefore become of the principle of separate Indian education in the Cape? If the Minister wanted to confine it to Natal, I would probably have nothing to say because I do not know the position there, except that I object to separate education. I believe in open universities and I have said so before. We fought the Coloured Education Bill strenuously and on the same principle I must oppose this Bill.

I just want to say that there is an institute called the Habiba Institute at Athlone where these children go. I understand that the teachers at this institute are Coloureds and Indians. What I want to ask the Minister is this. If he does establish Indian schools, will he insist that the teachers be only Indians, or will Coloureds be allowed there too? And if it is only for Indians, can he tell me, if there are not enough Indian teachers in the Cape to fill the posts, where are these Indians to learn to become teachers? Will it be in the Coloured schools and the Coloured university? It destroys the whole basis of this separation if an Indian has to go to a Coloured school to learn to become a teacher there and then he has to come back to an Indian school. I only wanted to show the Minister that in regard to the Cape this Bill is completely unnecessary. I want to extract a promise from the Minister that he will not introduce this Bill in the Cape, or at least not before he has evidence as to the necessity for it. To say, as the Minister has said, that he is waiting for group areas for these schools, is not the point. These children will be too few. But in any case the majority of wives of those Indians will not be Indians at all and the children of those marriages by Mohammedan rites will be classified either as Coloureds or Malays, and they will not go to the Indian schools anyway. There will not be enough. The Minister should consider this matter very seriously before he introduces it here.

Coming to the Bill itself, the hon. member for Houghton has already dealt with one or two of the clauses, particularly Clause 16. which deals with misconduct, and I want the Minister particularly to consider paragraph (h), because Coloured teachers interpret para (h) —it is the same as in the Coloured Education Bill …

Can we not discuss that in the Committee Stage?

I just want to give the Minister the reason why he must consider it.

It says—

then he will be committing an offence. That has been interpreted by Coloured teachers as meaning that they cannot even come to a Member of Parliament representing Coloured people to approach the Department in regard to non-payment of the salaries. It is a complete zip-fastener. They are not allowed to go to anybody; they must go to the Department, with the result that many grievances are not aired because they do not want to go to the Department to complain. I think the Minister should consider that paragraph very seriously.

There is also the other provision which says that a teacher will be committing an offence if he undertakes, without the permission of the Minister, any private agency or private work. There are Coloured teachers who find it necessary to supplement their income by doing a little extra work, and I ask the Minister to consider seriously the scrapping of that clause as well.

Generally, I want to say on behalf of the Indians of the Cape that this Bill is unnecessary. It will diminish the standard of their education. There is no necessity to take them out of their present schools and I hope the Minister will take heed of what we say because we know the position. I hope the Minister will give us an assurance that before he introduces this in the Cape he will have a conference of all interested people before he separates the present students from their present schools.

Mr. Speaker, this discussion on education and the take-over Bill we have before us has naturally been an opportunity for members on both sides of the House to expound the political philosophies of the two respective parties. This is the third take-over Bill we have had in the House, Bills which have provided for the taking over of education from the provinces by the Central Government. The Minister of Indian Affairs has been associated with two of them, first of all as the hon. the Prime Minister’s lieutenant in the taking over of Bantu education and now as the responsible Minister for taking over Indian education from the provinces. We have discussed our policies. We have said, e.g. that we stand for a different policy on points of administration. It is quite inevitable, as the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) has pointed out, that with our similar backgrounds in this House there will be a great deal in common in regard to providing Indian education. What we mean by class management and the background of education is very much the same, but we differ on certain important points of policy. We have had bandied about in this debate the expression “integration in education”. The United Party has been accused of being a party which stands for integration in education. Now, what is meant when hon. members use that expression? Do they mean in the first place that we stand for the establishment of multi-racial schools, schools which any member of the population may attend? If that is what they mean, it is quite obvious that it is untrue. Hon. members know that we do not stand for that. We do not say that all members of the population should go to the same schools. The Leader of the Opposition has said so in the House quite definitely.

And the universities?

I will come to that later. If they mean not integration in multi-racial classes and schools, but integration in the administration of education, where you have one Department controlling the education of Bantu and Indians and Whites and Coloureds, then we say that we stand for that. We have always stood for that. That is how education is being conducted in South Africa to-day. That is how it has been conducted for 100 years. In Natal to-day they have an Education Department which is responsible for the education of Whites and of Indians, and the same is true of the Transvaal and of the Cape. It is our system in South Africa. It has always been our system until the enunciation of this new policy of apartheid where it is necessary to establish four Departments of Education instead of one. That is where we have differed.

The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg) mentioned universities. What do we stand for in regard to education at universities? The education at universities is not controlled directly by any department of education. We believe, as hon. members opposite believe, in the autonomy of the universities, that the universities themselves should declare the policy that will control their own university. We have always stood for that. If the University of Stellenbosch says: In our university there will be White students only and the medium of instruction will be Afrikaans—I do not know whether they say that, but if they do we say: You shall have that kind of university. If a university says: We wish to provide education not only for White students but for students who wish to follow courses here that they cannot follow in other places, and we can provide for them, then we say that university should be autonomous. That is our policy. But in regard to schools, where there has been the provincial control of education, we say quite frankly there should be schools for Whites and schools for Coloureds and of course schools for the Bantu. That is the essential difference, and on that basis I think we can proceed to a consideration of some of the points of this Bill.

The hon. the Minister has two Departments under him now. Our policy, in contrast to this, is to say that if education is to be transferred to the Central Government—we did not ask for that; we think it can be controlled more efficiently by the provinces—then we think there should be one Department of Education for the whole of South Africa. I think the ideal department would be the Department of Education, Arts and Science, and I think that that Department should have what the Broome Commission recommended for Natal, sub-departments, one dealing with White education, one dealing with Coloured education, one with Bantu education and one with Indian education. [Interjection.] The same lot of officials could help in all of them. It would mean a saving of time, and it would cost much less than this system is costing today. That is a constructive suggestion and certainly preferable to the system recommended by the Government to-day.

You want sub-departments and we want departments.

Not necessarily sub-departments. I have used the expression “sub-department” because I know that if you have a large Department of Education there will be sections in the various branches of education. If you are prepared to call them sections I am prepared to accept it. That is the policy we have stood for.

Now I come to this question of the actual take-over by the Minister. We have been told that in the take-over of Coloured education the result has been greater efficiency. Coloured teachers have received better salaries and there are better facilities for education. I am prepared to accept that, and the reason is very obvious. When the Government took over they spent more money. They said: We are not going to buy the Coloured people but we will show them that now you have a Government which will assist you; we are Santa Claus; we will give you more than you had before; we will give you better posts and we will establish new schools. And of course people said that would be an excellent thing, and therefore the coloured people were more inclined to accept it. There were Coloured people who did not like the system in the beginning but who accept it now. Now we are discussing the attitude of the Indian teachers, who were at first opposed to the change but gradually changed their minds, the suggestion being that when it was explained to them they saw the light. But I do not believe that for a moment.

It was also more money.

No, it was not more money; I think it was something quite different. The Indian teacher has not the freedom that a White teacher has, and the Coloured teacher has not that freedom either. The Indian teacher saw what happened to the Bantu teacher when he objected to the system of Bantu schools. Those who did object were branded as agitators and they were put out of the Department.

That is untrue.

There were such cases, and their loss is unique, because the teacher who has been trained to teach in Government schools cannot teach anywhere else. If a Bantu teacher is told to-day that the subsidy for his salary will not be paid by the Government, the school board has no alternative but to dismiss him. The Indian teacher, seeing what happened to the Bantu teacher, naturally said that he must conform and that he would make the most of the new system. I think they will do that and that they will do it loyally, as teachers do. I think their first thought is for the education of the children.

Now I come to a very interesting question in Indian education, one that is always discussed in education in South Africa, namely the medium of instruction. As the hon. member for Witbank (Mr. Mostert) has pointed out, there is our philosophy in education. What philosophy do we have? Hon. members opposite say that the education in the schools must reflect the life at home and the culture of the pupil; the child is the important thing. Well, what is the home and the culture of the Indian child? His home language and his religion are the two essential features of that culture. What is his home language? It is Gujerati or Tamil. Perhaps later if he goes to India he may be able to learn Hindi, and of course the international language is English. What is his religion? It is either the Muslim religion or Hindu. So there you are. The two elements of his culture are not in school. As the hon. member for South Coast has made perfectly clear to us to-day, the education for an Indian child will be the Western education that Indians in India are having to-day, and they are reluctant to have any language foisted upon them that they are not familiar with already. The lanuage they are familiar with is English. What they will decide I do not know, but in this Bill provision is made for a decision to be made by the Department in a case of doubt as to which of the two official languages the Indian child can speak better. If there is a case of doubt an officer of the Department will declare this and then the parent will be allowed to decide. I want to make an appeal to the Minister. Do not let us have that procedure. Let us have a simple procedure whereby the Indians in an area or a community or a family will say: We choose Afrikaans, or we choose English as the language we know better. You will not make many mistakes then. People used to say about the children who went to White schools that if the parent were allowed to decide he would decide to the disadvantage of the child. I do not believe that. I have not had that experience, and I have seen thousands of children pass through schools. I have had to decide doubtful cases under a law of which I did not approve. But still I had to be a loyal servant and carry out the policy we had in the Transvaal, where the parents sent a child to school who was bilingual. It was decided that this was a problem child because he could speak two languages at the age of six years, the type of young South African we were looking for. But instead of asking the parents to decide what they wanted, we said: We cannot allow you to go on in that way; officials have to decide. Do not let us have that with the Indian child.

That was in the time of the United Party, when you were there.

No, not only when I was there; that was the policy laid down from the beginning. I was there with them all. I was there under the Nationalist Party, too—not this Nationalist Party but the Nationalist Party of General Hertzog.

What are we trying to give the Indian child when we give him an education? I have spoken about his culture, his language and his tradition, and I have said that he should have a Western education. What is the most essential thing for the Indian child in his education? Not the tradition of his people or his language or religion. The most essential thing in a system of education is to give him something to enable him to earn a living.

The three R’s.

Not necessarily that, but a system of education which will enable him to earn a living. Right throughout Africa to-day they are getting away from the old idea of tribal education, building up national feeling. They say: Let us give our people an education which will assist them in earning a living. If an Indian can earn a better living, he will be a better citizen. We are not educating him so that he will become a loyal member of his own community or his own church. Our first consideration in the school is to enable him to earn a living.

I should like to ask the Minister, when he introduces this new system, whether he will make provision for pensions for Indian teachers.

Provision is made for it in the Bill.

I know. Provision is always made, but after ten years of Bantu Education there is no pension scheme yet.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

I was dealing with the pension clause for teachers. The next thing I want to ask is this. We have been told by the hon. member for Marico (Mr. Grobler) that in the organization of this Department, and all these departments that fall under this Government, we have the White public servant who is the connecting link. I want to know from the Minister whether it is his intention to introduce Indians in the highest posts in his Department. If we are to be parallel and equal in terms of Government policy, will the Indians have the opportunity to rise in the Public Service and control the Department? They have very able people, will they be appointed as inspectors of schools?

One has already been appointed.

I should like to know whether it is going to be the policy eventually in all these posts to replace the Whites and give the Indians control of this system of education. I am not asking for anything revolutionary; that is Government policy. The Minister has not done anything of that kind for Bantu education, because I regularly put put questions on the Order Paper and the Minister tells me that not one of the senior posts is occupied by a Bantu. I am very glad to hear that there is going to be a chance for the Indians.

Finally I want to ask that when we consider the Natal Province, where there is a greater Indian population than in any other part of South Africa, where we have Zulus as well, and where the Minister is responsible for two systems of education (one for the Indians and one for the Zulus), does he not think that it is going to cause friction between those two races if one is going to have a generous scheme of education, as you have for Indians, and the poor Zulus have to get along with their Bantu education? I think that is a fair question. I think the hon. the Minister should remember that there are two expressions which are frequently used in this House: “Ek daag hulle uit; ek waarsku hulle.” I do not want to warn the hon. the Minister but I ask him to give it his careful consideration. I also ask the hon. member for Vryheid to consider that there you are going to have two Coloured sections, Indians on the one hand and Zulus on the other, living in the same Province cheek by jowl. The one is going to have a much more generous system of education than the other because the system of education that the hon. the Minister is going to give the Indians is not the system for the Bantu. There are to be no community schools; he has gone back to the system of his own province. He is giving them under Clause 8 (2) the system of the Natal Province, a system that has been adversely criticized here for years. It is a fine system. The Minister has now adopted the Natal system. The hon. the Minister makes provision for a a school committee or any other parents’ body. It may be a parent-teachers’ association, but he has gone to the Natal system of education for his inspiration. I ask the hon. member for Vryheid, if that system that he has criticised so adversely in this House on many occasions is good enough for the Indians, surely it is a very good system and surely he must be satisfied with it. I should like, if possible, to see the hon. the Minister extend that system to Bantu education. If he were to do that then I think he would be making progress. There are quite a number of clauses in this Bill that we shall have to consider but we will do so when we come to the Committee Stage.

I want to start by replying to the questions put to me by the hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) because they are rather isolated from the matters raised in the rest of the debate. I want to make it perfectly clear that this Bill will have no direct or immediate effect upon the education of Indians in the Cape Province. Indian pupils in the Cape Province have been attending Coloured schools throughout the years and because Coloured education has already been taken over by the Central Government, the control over education in the case of schools which are attended by Coloureds and Indians in the Cape is already in the hands of the Central Government. There is no question of a take-over of education for Indians in the Cape. All I said in my introductory remarks was that separate residential areas might come into being for Indians in certain urban areas in due course in the Cape Province and that separate schools for Indians might then be established as the result of the establishment of such separate residential areas. Those schools will then be transferred to the Department of Indian Affairs after consultation between Indians Affairs and Coloured Affairs. We have a similar problem in the Transvaal. There too we have small Indian communities spread over the Transvaal platteland as well as small Coloured communities scattered over the rural areas of the Transvaal. There are many schools which are attended by both Coloureds and Indians. In some of these schools the majority of the pupils are Indians and then there are other schools in which Coloured pupils are in the majority. Some of these schools in which Coloured pupils are in the majority have already been taken over by the Department of Coloured Affairs from the Transvaal Provincial Administration, and the schools in which Indian pupils are in the majority are still under the control of the Provincial Administration. In due course those schools will now be taken over by my Department when we take over this education in the Transvaal and separate schools will then be established as and when it becomes possible to do so and where there are sufficient children of the two groups to warrant the establishment of separate schools. This Bill, therefore, will have no immediate effect on the position in the Cape Province. The hon. member may rest assured that there will be close collaboration between my Department and the Department of Coloured Affairs before any steps are taken as far as the Cape Province is concerned.

I come now to the arguments advanced here by the Opposition. I want to say right at the outset that I shall not be able to reply at this stage to all the questions which have been raised here and which are not of great general interest. It would take me half a day to go into all those matters. Most of them can best be discussed in the Committee Stage when the clauses are under consideration. I want to confine myself to a few general observations made by hon. members opposite and I want to start with what the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) described as the United Party’s main objection in connection with this Bill. The hon. member said that the United Party’s main objection—I wrote down his words—was that this act on the part of the Government was an immoral act. He said that it was an immoral act because Section 114 of the Constitution of the Republic provides that Parliament may not take away from the provinces powers granted to the provinces in terms of Section 84 unless the provinces by way of petition request Parliament to do so. The hon. member says that because the Government is taking this step, because the Government is taking away the power of the provinces to control Indian education without the provinces having submitted a petition to Parliament in this connection. it is tantamount to a violation of the moral value of Section 114 of the Constitution. Sir, I want to settle this matter once and for all because it happens time and again, whenever legislation is introduced here which in some way or another may affect a provincial power, that that argument is advanced here by the Opposition. I want to refer hon. members to the whole history of this matter. I want to start with the original South Africa Act in which the powers of the provincial councils were laid down in Section 85. Section 85 read as follows—

Thirteen subjects are then set out, including—

1. (iii) education, other than higher education, for a period of five years and thereafter until Parliament otherwise provides.

“Until Parliament otherwise provides.” Then I want to refer to (iv)—

1. (iv) agriculture to the extent and subject to the conditions to be defined by Parliament.

The control over agriculture was also granted to the provinces.

Was that before 1934 or after 1934?

But that was subsequently amended.

I am pleased that the hon. member makes that point, because that is precisely what I am getting at. These two provisions are contained in the Act of 1909. There then followed the Status Acts of 1934, and as a result of the passing of the Status Acts of 1934 there was a fear in the minds of a large section of the population of this country that the provincial councils might be abolished or that their powers would be drastically interfered with, and it was in order to remove that fear that the then Government introduced a Bill in Parliament, a Bill which became Act No. 45 of 1934, in which it was provided that the boundaries of the provinces may not be changed; that provincial councils may not be abolished; that the powers of provincial councils may not be curtailed except by petition to Parliament by the provincial council concerned, and it is this very provision contained in Act No. 45 of 1934 which was later inserted in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa in Section 114.

Let us now examine the position to see what was the intention and the meaning of this provision. For that purpose I think we should look at the debate that was conducted in this House in 1934 with regard to this matter. I want to quote what was said by Advocate Pirow, who introduced the Bill. The hon. member for Hillbrow quoted a portion of Mr. Pirow’s speech but he omitted the most important part—

That is precisely what you are doing here.

In his reply to the debate Advocate Pirow made the following important statement—

That is to say, separately from the Status Act—

In other words, apart from this particular provision, the old South Africa Act was incorporated just as it stood in the Union Constitution Act after the Status Act and thereafter, in 1961, the Constitution of the Republic was passed. I now want to quote to hon. members the section which I asked the hon. member for Hillbrow to read out, but which he refused to quote, and that is Section 84 of the Constitution—

The section then goes on to set out precisely the same 13 matters which are referred to in the 1909 Act—

1. (c) education, other than higher education and Bantu education, until Parliament otherwise provides.

Now read Section 114.

When I referred to agriculture a moment ago in reading out a quotation, the hon. member said that that was before 1934. What does Section 84 (1) (d) provide?—

1. (d) agriculture to the extent and subject to the conditions defined by Parliament.

In other words, here we still have precisely the same wording as that contained in the original Act.

Read Section 114.

The important point is this: Section 114 (e) provides—

What power does Section 84 (c) give to the provinces? Section 84 (c) gives the provinces the power to control education until Parliament otherwise provides.

What becomes of the word of honour given in Section 114?

What the hon. member over there apparently refuses to understand is that this problem arose before the Status Acts in 1934. Before the passing of the Status Acts in 1934, this Parliament was subject to certain restrictions in amending the Union Constitution, but those restrictions did not apply in respect of any amendments of the powers of the provinces with regard to education, because the Act specifically gave the power to Parliament at that time to take away the control over education from the provinces after five years if Parliament saw fit to do so …

What about Section 114?

Section 114 was inserted in place of the guarantees which were contained in the old South Africa Act because there were people who felt that now that the Union Parliament could amend its Constitution as it pleased, those powers might be curtailed, but the powers of the provinces are limited there. It is specifically provided here that education will fall under the provinces until Parliament otherwise provides.

What does Section 114 mean then?

If the hon. member cannot understand it, then I can well understand why, in his old age, he is still sitting on that side of the House.

Do not become personal; tell me what Section 114 means.

Section 114 means that the substantive powers of the provincial councils may not be altered except by petition from the councils to Parliament, but the power to control education is not a substantive power of the provinces because, ever since 1909 up to the present day, the Constitution has given the control over education to the provinces only for so long as it pleases Parliament to leave the control in the hands of the provinces. In other words, this is not a substantive power of the provinces; it is a concession made by Parliament to the provinces.

No, that is a weak argument.

Hon. members opposite suggest that the provisions of Section 114 have a moral value. I admit that they have a moral value, but they have no juridical value.

Why is it in the Constitution then?

It was inserted in the Constitution because, when we became a Republic, hon. members on the other side sowed the suspicion that the Government was going to abolish the provincial system, and it was in order to do away with that suspicion that that provision was inserted; it was inserted for that reason and no other reason. Section 114 does not give the provinces any greater power than Section 84 gives them, and the powers granted to the provinces in terms of Section 84 in respect of education are limited powers.

It is a moral obligation.

Apart from that, hon. members on the other side adopted the attitude that the provinces did not want this measure. Sir, I want to say here unambiguously that I have in my possession a letter from the Transvaal Provincial Administration in which they request the Government to take over education for Indians.

Where is the request from Natal?

As far as Natal is concerned, a great hullabaloo has been raised here, and it has been suggested that Natal is strongly opposed to this Bill. Sir, I hold it against the hon. member for South Coast that he dragged the Administrator of Natal into this matter by saying that the Natal Executive Committee passed a resolution against the take-over of Indian education, and that the executive Committee included the Administrator. I want to deny here once and for all that the Administrator of Natal would have associated himself under any circumstances with such a resolution. If such a resolution was passed, then it was passed by the Executive Committee members appointed by the United Party and not by the Administrator-in-Executive-Committee. I do not think it is fair on the part of the hon. member to drag in the name of the Administrator of Natal in this connection.

I said that it probably included the Administrator.

I repeat that if such a resolution was passed, it was not a resolution passed by the Administrator-in-Executive-Committee; at best it could only have been a resolution passed by the Executive Committee or by the caucus of the United Party in Natal. But I want to go further and say that not even the Natal Provincial Administration or the Natal Provincial Council passed a resolution against the taking over of Indian education. No such resolution was passed because, on 18 and 19 May of last year, there was a discussion in the Natal Provincial Council on a motion introduced by Mr. Wilkes, a member of the Executive Committee and leader of the United Party in the Provincial Council, and Mr. Wilkes’ motion read as follows—

The motion did not request me not to do it, but requested me to take no decision in this regard until such time as I had obtained their consent and the consent of the Indian community. I thereafter met the Natal Provincial Administration and discussed this matter with them. Mr. Wilkes, a member of the Executive Committee, told me that, from their point of view, it would be useless to discuss the principle involved here; that he knew what our attitude was and that I knew what his attitude was and that it would therefore serve no purpose for us to discuss the principle, but that they, as an Executive Committee, were willing to co-operate and were anxious to co-operate wholeheartedly with the Government to give effect to the take-over as soon as possible and as smoothly as possible. That is why I say that no resolution was ever passed against the takeover. No protest was ever lodged with me against the take-over and no resolution was passed in public by the Natal Provincial Council rejecting the take-over.

They passed a resolution and you know that that is so.

I have stated the position as far as Natal is concerned very clearly, and if the hon. member for South Coast prefers to differ, then that is his affair. Sir, you heard here this afternoon what interpretation he placed on the request which he made to me two years ago to take over Indian education. He requested me in this House two years ago to take over Indian education, and I told him that I was willing to do so, that I would be willing to do so immediately, provided he undertook to help to see to it that no suspicion was stirred up by his party with regard to this matter.

I had to do it for you!

Sir, that is the responsibility that we get from the leader of the United Party in Natal! He asked me in this House to take over Indian education in Natal, but he wants to reserve the right to himself to sow suspicion and misgivings in the minds of the public against own motives in connection with education! No wonder his own people in his own constituency are rejecting him, as they did recently in Umkomaas.

I come now to the other argument advanced by the Opposition, and that is that in taking this step we are promoting the fragmentation of education. The hon. member for Hillbrow and others have said that education is indivisible. I do not know precisely what the hon. member means when he says that education is indivisible; I do not know whether he wants all education to be controlled by one body. If that is the case, then we should also take away the control over White education from the provincial councils and place all education under one department. Such a thing, of course, is quite impossible in a country like South Africa. I cannot understand therefore what the Opposition mean when they continually come along with the cry that education is indivisible. I accept the proposition that education is of a universal character, but I contend that it must be viewed against a background of the individual character and the requirements of every community. It does not mean that education for every nation or for every community must be precisely the same in every respect. Education is universal, but surely the system of education for the German differs from the system of education for the Frenchman or for the Japanese or for the Egyptian, although they may all comply with universal requirements; surely they differ from one another as far as the content of the educational matter or the details of the curricula are concerned. This is not a strange concept as far as the Indians in South Africa are concerned; this is not something new which is now being introduced in respect of the Indians. And here I hold it against the hon. member for Hillbrow, who ought to know the circumstances in Natal, that he stands up in this House and says, to use his own words, that the system of education for Indian children is the same as the system of education for White children in Natal. He said that their education was the same, that the methods were the same, that the same principles applied and that the examinations were the same. That was what he said about White education in Natal. The hon. member for South Coast said; “We have a common educational system in Natal”; in other words, a system which is applied to everybody. But what is the position in Natal? Hon. members had a great deal to say about the good work done by Natal in connection with the provision of education for the Indians. Sir, I did not want to point out the shortcomings, because I know that in the circumstances Natal did a great deal, but what is the position? What right has the United Party to say: “We have a common educational system?” What right have they to say that there is no difference when the position is the following: Indian children in Natal do not follow the same curriculum as White children in the primary schools. Since 1962 there has been differentiated education in the White secondary schools in Natal—the so-called two-stream education—but not in the Indian schools. Surely this is not “common education”; surely it is not “the same education”. In secondary education in Natal there is a much more limited choice of subjects in the Indian schools than there is in the White schools. Surely then it is incorrect to say, as the hon. member for Hillbrow did, that the systems of education are the same. Indian pupils in Natal have to write an external examination in Std. VI, whereas White children do not. Is that the same education? In the case of White children, instruction in the two official languages is compulsory. In the case of Indian children it is not compulsory. Indian children have to take Latin. Is that the same education? White and Coloured pupils in Natal—I am now talking about the days prior to the taking over of Coloured education, that is to say, prior to 1 April 1964— received books free of charge up to Std. VI, whereas Indian children did not. Books were only given free of charge to needy Indian children. Is that the same education? In the secondary schools White children and needy Coloured children received their books free of charge, but that did not apply to Indian children. Knowing that that is the position in Natal, the hon. member for Hillbrow makes the accusation against us that we now want to discriminate; that we want to discriminate in terms of this measure; that we want to give the Indian child an inferior education. That is not true. They have always received inferior education. They have never come into their own as far as education in Natal is concerned. Hon. members on the other side have advanced these arguments with one object and one object only, and that is to incite and to stir up the Indian community against the intentions of the Department of Indian Affairs and against the Government’s intentions. I am now beginning to understand why the Indian teachers of Natal, although initially they were in favour of this Bill in its entirety, now suddenly have misgivings with regard to certain clauses. Who aroused those misgivings on their part? I am beginning to have my own suspicions.

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question? Is the hon. the Minister aware of the public statement issued by Mr. Fowel, M.E.C., on behalf of the Executive Committee of Natal and published in the Daily News of 13 June 1964?

I am well aware of it, but my discussions with the Executive Committee of Natal took place after June 1964; they took place in October 1964.

The hon. member for Hillbrow and other hon. members opposite said that this Bill was going to limit the Indians to the confines of the Indian community; the hon. member for South Coast called it “a policy of fragmentation.” Sir, I want to say a word or two in connection with this argument advanced by the Opposition that one must not limit the education of a community to the confines of that community. The hon. member of Kensington —I think he was the only member who did so —adopted a clear attitude and that is that as far as education is concerned, there must be integration of control; in other words, there must be separate schools, but the control structure and therefore the professional structure must be integrated.

As it has always been.

In this connection I want to put a few pertinent questions to the hon. member for Hillbrow. My first question is this: If one adopts this attitude, bearing in mind that their policy is that it should be possible for Whites and non-Whites to study at the same university …

This has nothing to do with universities.

Hon. members on the other side dragged in the question of universities time and again and they must now take the consequences. Viewing these two things together, would the hon. member for Hillbrow be prepared to have an Indian professor or lecturer at such a university where White and Indian children study together, a university where White students are trained as teachers?

I cannot reply because it has nothing to do with this matter.

Sir, the hon. member refuses to reply. It would be quite easy for him simply to answer “yes” or “no,” but he refuses to answer.

Is that provided for in this legislation?

Hon. members on the other side referred time and again to the consequences of the policy of limiting education to the confines of a community. Let me go a step further. Under a system where there is integrated control, where we have an Education Department in the Province controlling both White and Indian pupils, is the hon. member for Hillbrow prepared to allow Indians to be appointed to the inspectorate to inspect White schools as well?

You know that that has not happened over the past 300 years.

In other words, he is not prepared to give the Indians the opportunity to fill the very senior posts. Is he prepared, in such an undivided department, to allow an Indian to become Director of Education? Is the hon. member for Kensington prepared to allow it? After all, he is the member who stated specifically that he was in favour of integrated control. Is he prepared to allow an Indian, under his system, ever to become Director of Education?

It is not my system; it has been the system of the whole of South Africa for 300 years.

It does not matter whose system it is. Are they prepared, under their system, to allow an Indian to become Director of Education?

Why do you sit together with the Indians?

Is the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) prepared to allow it? I will tell her what my attitude is, but I should like to know what hers is. Mr. Speaker, they will not answer this question, but that is the implication of their policy. The immorality of their policy lies in the fact that they want to offer so-called integrated education to the Indians but education in which Indians will never be able to obtain appointment to certain controlling posts. That is what the United Party is offering the Indians; that is what they have been offering the Indians throughout the years.

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question? Is the hon. the Minister prepared to appoint an Indian as Secretary of Education under this Bill?

That is precisely the point that I wanted to come to, Mr. Speaker. Let me first deal with the question of universities. As a result of this same policy which makes it possible to have separate universities for the Indians together with a separate educational system, it will be possible for Indians to be appointed to the highest university posts. As a matter of fact we already have an Indian professor and various Indian lecturers at the Indian university, positions which they would never otherwise have been able to occupy. An Indian has already been appointed within the Department’s Division of Indian Education as inspector of Indian education. A recommendation has already been submitted to the Public Service Commission for the appointment of a second Indian as school planner. These are posts which they could never occupy under the Natal Provincial Administration and which they would never have occupied.

I go further: Just as all professional and administrative posts will be open to them in due course, so it is possible, as and when the Indian community eventually assumes control over education for Indians, that an Indian may eventually occupy the post of Director of Indian Education.

It will take a hundred years.

The hon. member for Kensington tried to do the same sort of thing in the course of his speech; it is with that sort of remark that they are sowing suspicion in the minds of the public. It is that sort of remark which is publicised in the English-language newspapers.

I hope it will be.

The position—and the hon. member ought to know this—is that as far as the Bantu are concerned there is a tremendous shortage of skilled teachers, particularly in the secondary schools. Until such time as the teaching staff has been properly augmented they cannot be appointed to the higher posts. That will follow eventually. For the first time now we are giving them proper training. Since the Indian community has a greater number of trained people at its disposal it will become possible sooner to appoint Indians to the higher posts, and we are already doing so. In terms of this policy it is possible that the principal officer in the Indian Education Division of the Department may eventually be an Indian, once the Indian Council has taken final shape and is able to exercise control over Indian education. That is something that will never happen under United Party policy. They are the people who want to give the Indians inferior and limited education. It is only under the policy of this Government that it will be possible to do full justice to the Indians in the educational sphere as well.

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question? If that time should come, will the Minister then fall away as Minister of Indian Affairs?

Of course not. When that time comes the Minister of Indian Affairs will be there to serve as a link between the Indian Council and the Central Government.

As far as this accusation with regard to inferior education is concerned, I want to turn for a moment to the hon. member for Wynberg (Mrs. Taylor). I want to express my indignation at a statement made here by the hon. member to the effect “that this Government wants to force Indians and Coloureds to accept an inferior status.”

I did not say that; here I have my notes.

I wrote down the words used by the hon. member and I also have the hon. member’s Hansard here. She bases this statement of hers on a speech which I made in this House in 1964. When she quoted from my speech she conveniently omitted the middle portion and the latter half of the portion dealing with this matter. By doing so she created an impression which is entirely different from the impression created by the words I actually used. The hon. member said—

There she stopped quoting, and in doing so she created the impression that the educational and social research bureau was investigating the labour pattern so as to make it possible for us to get the Indians to do pick and shovel work.

You created that impression, not I.

What did I say? The hon. member now repeats her statement. What did I say? I began by saying—

That sentence the hon. member did not quote—

She then left out the following portion—

There was then an interjection—

An Hon. Member: That is the case amongst Whites too.

I then went on to say—

The hon. member only quoted as far as the word “Natal”, which is followed by a comma; in fact I went on to say—

In other words, it was a question of investigating the general pattern of unemployment and finding ways of coping with the problem of unemployment; it was not a question of conducting an investigation with a view to letting Indians do manual work. It was a question of investigating the reasons for unemployment and the reason why they would not do certain work and then trying to find solutions. The hon. member now quotes this in an attempt to prove that we want to give inferior education to the Indians; that we want to train them just to do manual labour.

Hon. members on the other side have also tried to create the impression that inferior education will be given to the Indians because of the fact that I am also Minister of Bantu Education. This is just a further attempt to incite these people. The hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), for example, said in reply to an interjection of mine that Bantu education was inferior because their curriculum was inferior and because they received instruction through the mother-tongue medium up to Std. VI and that they were consequently unable to make proper progress beyond Std. VI. That is the sort of thing that they propagate to the public. That is the sort of argument that they use to create distrust; but what are the facts? Until 1962 the Bantu pupils who wrote the matriculation examination were pupils who had received their training in the primary schools under the old system, pupils who in most cases received their instruction through the medium of English. In 1961 25.2 per cent of the candidates who wrote the matriculation examination passed. In 1962 the figure was 40.29 per cent. It was in 1963 for the first time that the matriculation examination was written by Bantu pupils who had received their instruction through the mother-tongue medium right up to Std. VI and the percentage of passes in that year was 60.2. In 1964 it was 61.5 per cent. Hon. members opposite say that the Bantu have an inferior education system. In point of fact, however, Bantu education has produced better results in Bantu schools than ever before.

Will you reply to what I said in connection with science subjects?

The hon. member referred to science subjects. The percentage of passes in science subjects is one of the most important. There were three important subjects in which Bantu pupils used to fail. The one was English A, which was a compulsory subject, and the others were science and mathematics. The percentage of passes in those three subjects, as a result of the fact that they received their instruction up to Std. VI through the mother-tongue medium, has improved to such an extent that it now exceeds 60 per cent. And then hon. members opposite accuse us of giving the Bantu poor education!

The mother-tongue medium does not come into the picture as far as the Indians are concerned because there we are dealing with different circumstances. It is simply impossible to make use of the mother-tongue medium in the case of the Indians because there are too many dialects. Even in India it is not possible to make use of the mother-tongue medium of instruction because of the fact that there are too many dialects. What I want to emphasize here is that the standard of education is the decisive factor, the standard which the pupils have to maintain in order to be able to complete their schooling up to matriculation. The senior certificate examinations have always been and will always continue to be under the supervision of the Joint Matriculation Board.

Just as the standards of university education are properly guaranteed, the guarantee in respect of the matriculation and senior certificate examinations remains, because the Joint Matriculation Board remains the supervisory body. Hon. members have referred to my so-called promise that the examinations will be conducted by the provinces and to the fact that the Bill provides that that will be done until the Minister determines otherwise. That is correct. It has never been the intention, and I have never given any assurance, that all examinations for Indians will be conducted by the provincial administrations in perpetuity. An agreement was in fact entered into with the provincial administrations that they will do so as an interim measure. We had to ask them very nicely to do so. Because of the volume of work it entails for them they do not want to do it for long. They have asked us to make other arrangements as soon as possible. For this reason examinations will eventually be conducted by the Department of Indian Affairs. I again want to give the assurance—I want to give it because the Opposition has tried to stir up suspicion in regard to the standard of education—that the Joint Matriculation Board will continue to exercise supervision.

I am glad to hear that.

Now the hon. member for Wynberg is glad to hear that. After ten years of Bantu education that is still the position in the case of Bantu education. It is the position as far as Coloured education is concerned. Hon. members on the opposite side do not want to believe that; they refuse to give us any assistance to make the non-Whites realize that fact as well. The Opposition are the people who are putting other ideas into the minds of the non-Whites.

I want to give a further assurance, and that is that as separate examinations are introduced or as changes are made in the curriculum, those changes will only be made after proper investigation by and recommendations from the subject committees, properly constituted subject committees such as each proper education department has. Mr. Speaker, you must remember that education is not static. Progress is made in the science of education and adjustments constantly have to be made; progress is made as far as the method of education is concerned. Adjustments constantly have to be made as a result of progress and advances that are made. In future, however, changes in respect of Indian education will not be made by White officials of provincial authorities, who have until now worked out these changes without consulting with the Indians. Do you know, Sir, that in Natal there is not a single subject committee which consults the Indians in connection with their education; there is not a single subject committee on which there is an Indian member. The Indians have no share in the work of the subject committees in Natal. I want to make it very clear that it is my object under this legislation to appoint a proper subject committee of Indian educationists for each subject. In the initial stages they will be assisted by White educationists as advisers. I want to emphasize that no changes in curricula will be made without such changes having been duly considered and recommended by the subject committees. For the first time in our history Indian educationists will get the opportunity of themselves having a say as regards the standard and the contents of the curriculum of their entire education system. There is no need for me to give them any guarantees as to standards. For the first time the Indians themselves will have the opportunity of laying down the standards and of acting as the watch-dogs as far as the maintenance of those standards is concerned.

The hon. member for South Coast asked me whether this education will be Oriental in character and whether they will learn Sanskrit. It is, of course, impossible always to follow all the wild flights of fancy of the hon. member for South Coast, but I think, for the sake of clarity, I must say here that the medium of instruction, as far as the Indians are concerned, will be one of the official languages; it will be the official language which they best understand in their particular locality; but, in addition, it will, as soon as possible, be made compulsory for them to learn the other official language as well. I want to add that other foreign languages of high cultural value will be accepted and offered as third languages, as is already being allowed by the Matriculation Board. For example Arabic and Hindi have already been granted recognition as optional third languages. They will, therefore, have the opportunity of learning their own languages as well. But the medium of instruction will be one of the official languages, and the other official language will also be made compulsory in due course.

Hon. members, and particularly the hon. member for Hillbrow, again asserted that Indian teachers were opposed to the take-over, and the hon. member for Hillbrow linked that up with the telegram I mentioned. That telegram expressed no opposition whatsoever to the Bill. It only expressed misgivings or asked questions in connection with four or five subsections, not even whole clauses, but there was no opposition thereto. The hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Kensington intimated here that they accept that most Indian teachers have probably accepted it now, but I must say I think it is reprehensible that they ascribed sinister or censurable motives to the Indian teachers as far as their attitude is concerned. The Indian teachers are perfectly capable of judging for themselves what is in their interest, and here I want to refer to an Indian newspaper which is by no means favourably disposed towards the Government or my Department, and that is The Leader. That newspaper recently conducted a survey among Indian teachers and came to the conclusion—

They are confident that such a transfer would bring added benefits.

Then they come to the conclusion that at least three-quarters of the Indian teachers are in favour of the take-over by the Central Government.

A question has also been put to me in regard to the salaries of Indian teachers, and I want to make it clear that the Government advised the Natal Provincial Administration several months ago that if they adjusted Indian teachers’ salaries to the same scales as those on which Coloured teachers’ salaries are at present, the Government would contribute its share in respect of that commitment. In spite of that, the Natal Provincial Administration has not adjusted the salaries of Indian teachers to the same scale as the salaries of Coloured teachers. I want to make it very clear that in respect of teachers at the M.L. Sultan College and the Arthur Blaxall School for the Blind, institutions which already fall under my Department, we have already adjusted the scales for Indian teachers on the same basis as those for Coloureds. As soon as Indian education is taken over, the key scales of Indian teachers will be adjusted to the key scales for Coloured teachers.

I now come to the financial aspect, which was referred to so frequently here. The hon. member for South Coast said that the financial aspect was in actual fact the only problem as far as Indian teachers were concerned. If the Central Government would only be prepared to give more money to the province, there would be no problem. But we must remember that the provincial system in South Africa rests on the basis of provincial sources of revenue plus a basis of subsidization by the State which is the same for all the provinces. In spite of this basis on which the whole of our provincial system rests, Natal has already received additional subsidies. If they were to receive unlimited subsidies, nothing would contribute more to the downfall of the provincial system than such a scheme. If we want to give provinces unlimited subsidies over which this Parliament has no say, if out of the money obtained from the sources of revenue of the Central Government we have to make available unlimited amounts to the provincial authorities, then I say that there is nothing which will sooner put an end to the provincial system, because this Government is rightly jealous of the utilization of the moneys at its disposal, and if it has to provide the provinces with unlimited amounts over which it has no say and which the provinces may simply spend without having to give any account to their people (because the money does not come from their sources of revenue), it will lead to a system which cannot be tolerated in this country.

Nobody suggested that.

But that is precisely what the hon. member requested. He said that the only problem was money. He asked why the Government did not give the money to the Province of Natal, because then there would be no problem. Then they could carry on with Indian education.

I have also been asked who is going to pay for the education of the Indians, and the hon. members sowed the suspicion that there was some or other sinister motive. I am surprised at that, because the Bill provides very specifically that schools will be erected and established out of moneys appropriated for the purpose by Parliament; in other words, from the Consolidated Revenue Account. Parliament will, therefore, make available the money for that purpose. There is no intention to do it in any other way. It will be done in precisely the same way as in the case of Coloured education. I must add here that suspicion is apparently being stirred up because of the provision in Clause 25, which provides for the levying of school fees and the collection of school fees where they exist. I just want to state clearly that it is not the intention to levy school fees for ordinary primary and secondary education. But hon. members must remember that this Bill makes provision for all education; the training of teachers is involved, and so are part-time classes, adult education and special schools. And it may be necessary, and in respect of some of these services it will certainly be necessary to charge school fees. That is why this provision is made, but it is not the intention to charge school fees in respect of ordinary primary and secondary schools.

A further argument used by the Opposition was that in these times of manpower shortage this was an unnecessary duplication. It is true, of course, that, as far as the professional staff and the highest administrative posts are concerned, there will have to be some small measure of duplication, but on the profit side it must be stated that there will now be an opportunity of training Indians to take over the administrative and professional posts gradually. In other words, as far as the Whites are concerned, it is going to result in a saving of manpower in the long run, because we shall eventually be able to release more people from their responsibilities in this field and because we shall, to a larger extent, be able to employ the Indians to render services to their own communities. The measure of duplication there will have to be, for the time being, very small, because posts will be withdrawn as far as the provinces are concerned, as a result of the fact that this education is being taken over from them, and as far as other posts are concerned, several are already on the establishment of the Department of Indian Affairs, and, in addition, large-scale use will be made of Indians, as I have said.

Because the suspicion has been created all along by every United Party speaker that the Department of Indian Affairs and I as Minister cannot be trusted with Indian education because we would provide inferior education to them, and because we would not pay the necessary attention to it, I just want to refer, in conclusion, to what has already been done in certain respects in the short period in which my Department and myself have had to deal with the education of Indians. At the M. L. Sultan College a new domestic science division is being added and has nearly reached completion; a sub-division for female hairdressers has been established and new equipment is now being purchased for it; a physical education division has been established, a special administrative post of vice-principal has recently been created for this division and has already been filled by a highly qualified professional person. This division is growing enormously and is creating fine possibilities as far as the physical wellbeing of the Indian is concerned. We have already appointed the first Indian as inspector of schools and an educational planner will be appointed soon. It has been known for quite some time that there is an acute shortage of trained Indian teachers in Natal. Even last year and this year Natal still had to employ a large number of unqualified Indians as teachers, so that out of approximately 4,100 Indian teachers in Natal at the moment, nearly 1,200 are unqualified, which is more than 25 per cent. And the number of unqualified teachers is increasing year by year. Irrespective of the take-over or otherwise I felt concerned about the position, and I have already made available R40,C09 in respect of the present year for bursaries and other expenditure on training, and a special course has been introduced at the University College for Indians with a view to immediately training approximately 140 additional teachers. This scheme has been carried out in collaboration with the Natal Provincial Administration. My educational planners are at present studying the whole question of the training of teachers and will soon submit a draft to me in which better utilization and possible expansion of training facilities as well as the introduction of adequate loans and bursaries will be dealt with.

Another matter which has received attention is psychological services and vocational guidance. Until the present time these services have never existed for Indian pupils, and a psychologist will soon be appointed to undertake the planning of these aspects of Indian education. This is a completely new set-up as far as the Indians are concerned. I also want to refer to the matter of free books, and I want to make it clear that it is the intention to provide free books as soon as possible, to at least the same extent as in the case of Coloured pupils. That means that in Natal free stationery and books will be provided to all Indian pupils up to and including Std. VI, and that an aid scheme will be introduced for needy pupils in the secondary classes as well.

I mention these things to show what has already been done and what is being contemplated. The whole attitude adopted by the United Party was calculated to stir up suspicion and to show that inferior education would be provided to Indians. That attitude was aimed at keeping Indian education as it is to-day, merely an appendix, something pinned onto White education, an appendix which is imposing a tremendous burden on the Province of Natal. I think the Province of Natal will be grateful to this Government in the future for this step it has taken. That also explains why not a single voice of protest has been raised against this Bill in Natal since it was announced that Indian education would be taken over and since I had the discussions with the Provincial Administration. One can perhaps explain the fact that the hon. member for South Coast has to do it now. He is in a difficult position. He had to say something about the Bill.

Question put: That the word “now” stand part of the motion, Upon which the House divided:

Tellers: D. J. Potgieter an P. S. van der Merwe.

Tellers: N. G. Eaton and A. Hopewell.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to and Bill read a second time.

I move— That the Bill be now read a third time.

When we moved at the second reading that this Bill should be read “this day six months” we were criticized by the hon. the Minister, who said that we had rejected the principle of the safety of the State. The hon. Minister equates the safety of the State with the interests of the State. He also said that they (the Government side) would make the accusation against us in season and out of season that to us the safety of the State was a matter of indifference. This comes strangely from a Minister who has had personal experience in other times of crises, as to just how jealous we, the United Party, are of the safety of the State, and it must be a great relief to this Government to know that if the safety of the State is attacked or in danger at any time, it will be able to rely on the Opposition in doing its duty and supporting the Government in defending the safety of the State, which has not always been the position with other governments in charge of this country in other times of crisis. Sir, we do not stand back for any member on the other side in our loyalty to the State and our determination to protect the safety of the State.

The hon. Minister said that in moving the amendment, we had rejected the whole principle of the Bill. We deny that. We rejected the principle as it applied to one section of the Bill, and we rejected that firmly and we made it quite clear what part of the Bill we objected to. In the Committee Stage we tried to right the matter; we moved an amendment which we thought would meet the requirements of the Minister. Our objection, as the Minister knows, was to the wide definition of “police matter”. We were not opposed to the amendment which introduced “military matters” and we said why we were not opposed to the introduction of military matters, because there was some certainty as to what was meant by the term “military matter”, but we felt that the term “police matter” needed some defining.

The hon. Minister in introducing the Bill said that these words had been introduced because of the new type of war which exists at present. He said we have a cold war which is just as important as a hot war, and in order to meet the dangers of a cold war these words, he said, were being added to the Official Secrets Act. We appreciate that, we appreciate that the relations between nations now are different from what they were in the olden days, that nations do apply cold war methods in attacking each other in peacetime. We recognise that: we know the troubles which the Minister is facing, and we made it quite clear that if this Bill was amended so as to make it quite clear that it was only to deal with matters affecting the safety of the State, we would give our blessing to it. Why did the hon. Minister reject our amendment? If the Minister had accepted our amendment to define “police matter” as a matter affecting the safety or the security of the State, we would have accepted the Bill in the third reading. We contend that our amendment would cover the whole case mentioned by the Minister. He would need no further powers. He gave us instances of what he wanted to meet and we moved our amendment to meet those cases. But the hon. Minister knew very well that if he accepted our amendment and we withdrew our objection to the Bill, he would not be able to make political capital outside. That is why he refused to accept the amendment. Because let us consider again the example he gave. He only gave one example and that was of a report in a newspaper of the massing of police on the border of a protectorate where it was expected that there would be some illegal entry into the country. Under our amendment a report of that nature would be covered if it was going to affect the security of the State. The Minister said it was nonsense for us to contend that under police matters the Bultfontein case would be covered, because it was not a secret matter. The Minister seemed to be under the impression that the matter had to be secret to be covered by this provision, but that is not so, was pointed out in the Committee Stage. The section of the Act being amended is Sec. 3 and the Minister did not reply to us when we pointed this out in the Committee Stage, so perhaps he will reply in the third reading. Section 3 has three sub-sections, and sub-sec. (2) is the one now being amended. Sub-sec. (1) refers to any person who has in his possession or under his control any secret, official code or password or any sketch, etc. and sub-sec. (3) refers to secret codes, passwords, etc., but sub-sec. (2) does not mention the word “secret” at all. Therefore we contend that it can cover any matter. It can, e.g., cover the Bultfontein case.

So can a military matter.

It must be remembered that this Bill will not be applied only to the newspapers, but to every individual in the country. Our complaint is that no individual will know for certain whether he is committing a breach of the law. He may do so quite innocently. The subject matter may be passed on indirectly; he may not even know he is doing it. In terms of the Act there is a presumption against him. The onus is on him to prove that he had no such intention.

That has always been the case.

I know. The hon. member for Ceres said something about military matters; would it not affect the individual in the same way? When people deal with military matters or speak about them, they generally know that military matters may be secret matters. People know that they must not talk about military matters as freely as they talk about police matters because the military are concerned with the defence of the country and we know the military have secrets which the public are not allowed to know. But in regard to police matters, they will never know what it regarded as being against the interest of the State. They may know what is regarded as being against the safety of the State, and if they then pass on some information which might be against the safety of the State they can be dealt with, but they will never know what is against the interests of the State. That is why in so far as police matters are concerned, the public is not in a position of being wary as they would be in regard to a military matter.

The Minister says we must accept the Bill because the N.P.U. accepted it. He said that we were caught off balance because we did not know that the N.P.U. had accepted the Bill and we prepared our amendment beforehand and went on with it, but I would like to point out that the Minister told us that the N.P.U. were prepared to accept the Bill and after that the hon. member for Germiston (District) moved his amendment. Why must Parliament be satisfied merely because the N.P.U. is satisfied? This Bill does not deal with newspapers only; it affects every individual in the country and our duty as parliamentarians is to protect not only the interests of newspapers but the interests of every citizen of the country. I submit that it is no justification for the Minister to say that we must accept the Bill because the N.P.U. accepted it, and it should be borne in mind that the N.P.U. were not very happy about accepting it. The Minister himself said that the N.P.U. asked whether he could not give a definition of police matters and he told them that it was difficult to define it because once you watered it down it would lose its effectiveness, and they appreciated his difficulty, and said that they would accept his assurance that it would be applied in the way he told them it would be applied. Actually it is the Attorneys-General who will decide how it will be applied, and they may differ from the Minister as to what is meant. But apparently the N.P.U. was satisfied with the assurance given by the Minister that it would be applied in the way he told them it would be applied. But we are not satisfied that the Act will be applied in that manner. This Minister will not always be the Minister, and the Attorneys-General may differ. We do not know how they will react to this measure. Therefore we stand by our position and oppose the Bill.

The Minister says that we had no right to oppose the principle by moving that the Bill be read this day six months if we thought that the Bill could be improved in the Committee Stage. I say we had to oppose the principle because we did not know whether we could move a satisfactory amendment. But supposing there was some justification for the Minister’s contention, he certainly cannot hold that now in the third reading because the Committee Stage is past and the Bill cannot be amended. The Minister has accepted no amendment and he told us in the second reading that he would not accept any amendments. So it mattered not what amendments we moved, because he told us beforehand that he would not accept any amendments. Therefore, because the Minister is adamant, we have no further option in the third reading but again to move—

Mr. Speaker, I find it most interesting that hon. members opposite have no argument, apparently, to put forward in support of the Minister. I must say I do not find it surprising in view of the Minister’s attitude during the Committee Stage. His attitude was that he was interested in the safety of the State. He went so far as to say that every member who claims that he is interested in the safety of the State will be tested on the basis of his support or opposition to this Bill at the second reading. The hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes) has indicated that this Minister is not the person to say that sort of thing to hon. members on this side. But apart from that, the object of this Bill in the Minister’s eyes, as we see it, has been reinforced by his attitude in the Committee Stage. This Minister based his whole attitude towards our amendment and our attitude to the Bill upon an amendment moved by the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker). As the hon. member for Transkeian Territories has pointed out, it would have made no difference whatsoever if we had moved that the Bill be read this day six months or if we had just voted against the Bill or if we had moved a reasonable amendment to it, because the principle the Minister was referring to, namely that if it was killed by that vote—and he knew it would not be— it could not be brought up again this Session, applies to whatever amendments we may have moved. The Minister sought then to say what his attitude would be. He said then that he would accept no amendment whatever, before he had ever seen it, before he had heard any argument whatever as to the amendments which would be moved. I might say that those amendments were moved before the Minister made his attitude clear.

So we have at this stage a Bill in the form in which the Minister intended it to appear, and it is as vague as the Minister intended, and it will apparently serve the purpose the Minister had in mind, and that purpose was not, as the Minister said, to ensure the safety or the interests of the State. That was not his object, in the context in which he used it. The hon. member for Transkeian Territories has pointed out that this has nothing whatever to do with official secrets. The sub-section here being amended has nothing to do with official secrets. There are two other sub-sections which deal with all official secrets. The Minister has used that as one of the arguments why he would not accept our amendment, so it holds no water at all.

The Minister says the Bill has to do with the safety of the State. He uses the expression “any police matter” and he cavilled at what the hon. member for Transkeian Territories had to say in regard to the Bultfontein case. I do not know why he did that. The Minister knows that he did not like the publicity given to the Bultfontein case. He obviously does not want a repetition of that if he can possibly help it. He obviously does not want a repetition of the incident, nor does he want a repetition of the publicity which followed it. [Interjection.] The hon. member says I am talking nonsense, but let me quote what the Minister said to my leader during the Prime Minister’s Vote last year when this matter was being discussed. He said—

That is the Minister’s attitude to a matter like that. With such an, attitude no one must wonder that we view this Bill with suspicion. When the Minister makes statements like that and accuses a responsible man like the Leader of the Opposition of joining in such an occasion, he must not be suspicious of our suspicion. Why does the Minister not define “any police matter”? Why did he not accept our amendment, which was simply that a police matter should be restricted to matters relating to the internal security of the State—simply what the Minister said it is intended to deal with? But the Minister refused the amendment and gave two reasons. The one he did not give is that he was feeling a bit petulant and sulky because of our attitude in the second reading. The first reason is that it has to do with official secrets, which is not a reason at all. His second reason is that it will water it down and it will be useless. In other words, what the Minister told us in the Committee Stage is that it would then confine it to what we wanted to confine it to, and that is matters relating to the internal security of the State, and he does not want that. Surely that is clear to everyone in this House, that the Minister does not want police matters in this context only to deal with matters relating to the internal security of the State, because otherwise, if he was sincere in what he said, he would have accepted that amendment. The fact of the matter is that the expression “any police matter” is so vague as to include any matter whatever. I ask the Minister again whether he does not agree that a police matter is almost any matter from the cradle to the grave that an individual can do in South Africa to-day. The Minister’s attitude towards matters of public concern, such as e.g. what happened at Bultfontein, which was a mater of public concern, about which the public was entitled to know—matters of house arrest are matters about which the public is entitled to know; they are entitled to know who has been put under house arrest and who has been arrested, and why people have been arrested. The Minister’s Press, I can say with confidence, the daily Afrikaans language press, has said that this was one of the intentions of the Bill, to preclude the newspapers from publishing the names of people who had been arrested by the police.

Why do you not quote it?

I have not got it with me, but there is a dinner adjournment coming and I will find it. Surely it is in the interests of the public to know exactly what the police are doing, especially when their sphere of operations is as wide as it is in South Africa. Surely it is in the interests of the public to know, for example, whether people have been removed from the City Hall in Durban, when certain Coloured people were removed from the first gallery during a performance because it was a contravention of the Luxurama ban. The police removed them, and that is a police matter.

Which does not affect the safety or interests of the State.

I agree that it does not affect the safety of the State, but surely it affects the interests of the State if the Press play it up so much that the report brings the police into disrepute because they had to do that sort of thing. Surely the Minister will be the first one to say that it is not in the interests of the State to say anything about the police, regardless of what they do. That was the attitude of the Minister in regard to the Bultfontein case: Do not say anything about the police. The fact it that when the police do these things such as removing members of the audience from the City Hall, they have a completely different context from what they would have if the person in charge of the City Hall had asked them to leave. But when the police have to remove them it becomes a matter which is viewed differently, and if the Minister doe not like that he must see to it that the laws which the police have to administer are changed. He must see to it that the image created by all this is different. But that is not our concern. It is a matter of the people being entitled to know or not to know.

There are only two media by which the public get to know about anything that happens, the radio and the Press. The Minister knows that he can control his radio. He knows that over the S.A.B.C. nothing will come but what they want to come. But he cannot control the Press. He can control his own Press because they are lackeys of the Nationalist Party, but you cannot say that of the English language Press.

You have reached the stage where you do not even have lackeys any more.

No, the English-language Press has never belonged to the United Party in the way the Afrikaans Press belongs to the Nationalist Party, and when I say belongs, I really mean belongs. [Interjections.] There is the medium of communication to let the people know what is going on. The Minister’s attitude on this occasion is consistent with his attitude on other occasions. Is it not this Minister who said he was considering not allowing the Press to be present during certain trials, like an immorality trial and other matters. Is not this the same attitude of mind, that he does not want the people to know what happens? Why does he not want them to know? Because in relation to the immorality cases it is quite obvious that a lot of people thought that this law created unnecessary difficulties, and if they do not know about it they cannot fret about it. Likewise, with this nonsensical system of the permits issued as the result of the Luxurama ban, it is much better for the people not to know what is happening.

What has that to do with the Bill?

A great deal. It has this to do with the Bill that the Minister has refused to define what a police matter is. Munitions of war were defined and military matters are easy; we know what they are; they are matters relating to the military, but what a police matter is, nobody knows. This is deliberate. The Minister knows exactly what effect this will have on the Press. When he talks about the N.P.U. being quite happy about it, this was the management of the newspapers, and not the editors.

It was the editors who saw me.

The managerial side may well have agreed. The N.P.U. may well have agreed.

It was the editors of the Burger, the Cape Times and the Cape Argus who saw me.

I do not care. They were representing the N.P.U., and the N.P.U. they represented was the management. Does the Minister now deny that they represented the N.P.U.?

I told you they represented the N.P.U.

The N.P.U. was there in a representative capacity only. They said to the Minister: Well, if you say that is all that will happen, that is fine. Then the Minister said that they know better than we do how this Bill affects them. But they are not the people who have to put the news in. They are not the people who have to edit the news, who are responsible for what goes in. The editors are the people responsible for that.

But I just told you it was the editors who saw me.

The Minister is a lawyer. Surely I do not have to tell him that whether they were in fact editors or lawyers or sweepers, they were the representatives of the N.P.U. and not of the Journalists’ Association, the people who have to do the reporting of these matters. If the Minister wants to know what the views were of the people who are responsible for the reporting and the editing and the laying out in relation to police matters, he should read the editorials in almost every English-language daily newspaper. There he will find the answer to what he says.

But the Minister knows that this is so vague as to be capable of the meaning that we put on it, and so vague as to be capable at certain times of the meaning he puts on it, and the newspaper is left in the middle. When the editor is faced with the report, what does he do? He does what the Minister intends him to do, what he knows he will do, the reason for putting it in this vague form. He will say: “I cannot take a chance; I am responsible to my management”, and so it will not be published, and that is precisely what the Minister wants. I believe it is so vague that if all these things went to prosecution they would have a very arguable case, but they will not take the chance, and the Minister knows that. That is another form of Press censorship, of holding a sword of Damocles over their heads to see that they do not publish these things, and the Minister knows it. and that is why he introduced this. Why should a military matter only be involved, or a police matter? Surely any matter which is published and has the effect of undermining the safety of the State should be included here. If you disclose something, whether it relates to a police matter or any other matter, for the purpose of undermining the safety of the State, you are guilty of some form of crimen laesae majestatis. So why does he put it in this form? He does it for the very reason that it will remain a sword over the heads of the editors. Perhaps when he replies the Minister will tell us what his attitude is, whether it is or is not in the interests of the public to know what the police are doing, and in the interests of the State. You know, Sir, there are other countries shades of which seem to appear in this Bill where what the police do is their own matter and no one dare say anything about it.

What are you trying to imply?

I am not trying to imply anything at all. I am saying that there are countries in which what the police do no one dare question or say anything about. That is what I am saying. You know what I am implying.

You are only too afraid to use the words “police state”.

I am one of those who believe that we are not a police state at the moment, but these are the little nibbles that the Government takes all the time along that road, slowly and quietly, along a totalitarian road—I say that the Government is following a totalitarian road and that this Minister is the main architect of that road in this House. He is the one who presents more and bigger bricks along that road to totalitarianism, and this Bill is a part of it, because freedom of the individual and of the Press are inseparable. The Minister knows that the public should know everything that this Minister does and the police do and every State Department does, so that they will be able to express their opinions about it. That is one of the basic tenets of democracy. The Minister is here making a deliberate inroad into one of those corner-stones, and he is doing it for a purpose, and he has not been frank with this House. If the Minister is sincere that he is only interested here in dealing with the safety of the State, then it behoves him, when this Bill goes to Another Place, to move the amendment which we moved in the Committee Stage. His attitude in the Committee Stage, more than anything else, justifies the amendment moved by the hon. member for Transkeian Territories.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8.5 p.m.

Evening Sitting.

The hon. the Minister of Justice at an earlier stage when introducing this Bill based his case for the rather wide terms in which this Bill is cast, on a number of examples—which he named—of the sort of situation which he wished to overcome by means of this legislation. For example, he mentioned the difficulties he had or which he foresaw in so far as the machinations of Communism in the cold war was concerned… Here I want to pause in order to point out that the hon. the Minister did not at all develop this theme, obviously because he has a great deal of legislation already by means of which he can control that difficulty. But the Minister then went on to deal with the operations of the security police in connection with the subversive organization known as Poqo, an organization with which we had to deal some months ago. The Minister said the difficulty was that there was the possibility of indiscriminate publicity of police matters and that if such indiscreet publicity were to be given, subversive elements would be given all the information they required to subvert the Government of this country. He said that it was with a view to combating such subversive elements, in matters such as, for instance, concentrations of the police, that he should have the powers contained in this Bill.

I have gone through the record of the proceedings so far on this Bill very carefully and have established that in all cases the hon. the Minister has dealt with matters which relates merely to the safety of the State. I presume it is necessary, even at this stage, once again to state that this legislation is not confined to matters dealing solely with the safety of the State. In fact, it extends beyond that limit, a limit on which there has been and still is a large measure of agreement. But this Bill extends beyond that limit to matters which can be considered as being prejudicial to the interests of the State—which, of course, is quite a different thing from the safety of the State.

Well, here we have a Bill which makes it an offence to communicate, however indirectly and with whatever good intent there might be behind such communication, a police matter prejudicial to the interests, as opposed to the safety, of the State. But the Minister has not given us a single example of what he has in mind in this regard, i.e. the interests of the State as opposed to the safety of the State. At no stage did he tell us in what respect he had difficulty as a result of a disclosure falling outside the meaning of the phrase “prejudicial to the safety of the State”. That is the difficulty which we on this side have had with this Bill right throughout. In fact, the only time the hon. gentleman used this phrase-—that is to say, the question of the interests of the State as opposed to the safety of the State— was when he referred to a complaint which was published in the Press, a complaint apparently made by the Commissioner of Police against persons who had complained about the inadequacy of police pay. This was the only example the hon. gentleman gave us. The Minister then went on to say that to complain about the inadequacy of police pay was to act against the interests of the State. These are the words the hon. the Minister himself used. Sir, it is certainly against the interests of this Government to complain about the inadequacy of police pay, but certainly not against the interests of the State. One of the difficulties we have in this respect is that daily hon. members of this Government as well as members of the Government Party associate the State with the Government, in other words, confusing the one notion with the other.

We had what amounted to an absurdity in the case put up by the hon. the Minister when he said that to protest about the inadequacy of police pay was against the interests of the State—and I repeat that those were the hon. the Minister’s words. He said that to say that such a protest was against the interests of the State did not mean that those words had the same meaning as the identical words have when printed in a Bill. Now, Mr. Speaker, such a statement is surely an absurdity. Surely words cannot have a different meaning when uttered by the Minister from what those words have when printed in a Bill! When the highest administrative authority in the Department of Justice himself believes that to complain about the inadequacy of police pay is to do something which is against the interests of the State, how then can the hon. the Minister expect anybody else to have a different view when exactly the same words appear in a piece of legislation? The hon. the Minister is the Minister of Justice. He is an advocate and also an attorney. I do not know that we have had a Minister of Justice before who combined in his office as Minister both the office of an advocate as well as that of an attorney. Consequently we cannot approach this matter from the point of view that the hon. the Minister does not know the import of language or of his words when he uses it. For the Minister to stand up and seriously and deliberately to say to this House in the course of a difficult debate on a difficult matter that to complain about police pay is against the interests of the State, but that such a complaint does not fall within the terms of the Bill—and that while the identical words are being used, i.e. something prejudicial or against the interests of the State—then language has either lost its meaning or else the Minister has no case with which to meet our objections. So, it is not surprising that throughout the proceedings on this Bill in this House so far the Minister should wholly have avoided dealing with the main issue which separates us. This issue is not the question of the safety of the State—which does not divide us and never has. But this is the only basis on which the Minister has so far dealt with this matter and on which he has attacked us. It is not surprising in the circumstances that he should have confined himself entirely to that issue to the exclusion of the main issue between us, i.e. the phrase “police matters communicated prejudicially to the interests of the State”, wide and ill-defined phrases to which no precise meaning can, in fact, be given. I know the hon. the Minister has dealt with this once and I have referred to that portion of his argument where he dealt with it. For the rest he has avoided that issue entirely.

The hon. the Minister has, right throughout his argument, endeavoured to castigate this side of the House—one might say he did so on dozens of occasions—by levelling against us the accusation—an accusation which really constitutes the crux of his arguments—that we are against this Bill because we have no concern at all for the safety of the State. In the light of what has taken place, in the light of the arguments we have presented and in the light of the Minister’s persistent refusal to meet our arguments on their merits by merely resting his argument on an accusation as base as the one which he has made, in the light of this I think it is a terrible thing that we have had to witness a Minister of Justice of this country descending to such a shoddy level of argument. This I think is a great pity—it does no credit either to him or to this House.

But let us go back to the facts of the matter. This Bill is intended to amend the Official Secrets Act of 1956 so as to protect those aspects of police action the disclosure of which will be prejudicial to the safety of the State. That is the first aim of this Bill. We are all in agreement that this is a legitimate aim, i.e. to protect the safety of the State in this respect. But. Sir. he frames the one operative clause of this Bill so that it covers a large field of action falling outside this declared aim. That is the position, i.e. that the Minister framed this legislation in such a manner as to cover many actions which fall outside the Minister’s declared aim as stated by himself. What has an Opposition to do in such circumstances? What can it do but to point out to the Minister that his legislation does not cover the situation which he himself desires to have covered but goes beyond that? And what is more, it goes further in such a way that if implemented will have one result only, namely to stifle the freedom of the Press in an important and defined field. To do this is. I think, the proper attitude for the Opposition to take up in the circumstances. That is its function and its duty, a function and a duty which we will perform despite any smear which the hon. gentleman might like to level against us, as he has done during the second reading as well as during the other stages of this Bill through this House thus far. By this I want to say that he has not met our argument but has preferred to stand up and repeatedly—ad nauseum one might say—put across the accusation that we are against this Bill because we have no regard for the safety of South Africa. That has been his argument, and a base argument at that …

It is a scandalous argument!

It is a base argument, Mr. Speaker! There remains but one thing for me to say. I have said that the result of the hon. the Minister’s legislation—that is to say, of putting forward legislation of this kind— will be to stifle an important medium of public enlightenment, i.e. the Press, in a certain sphere. It does not mean that the Press will be wholly stifled. One has to say this in the negative as well as in the positive in view of the attitude the hon. gentleman has taken up. I am not saying that the Press will be stifled wholly by this legislation. But what I am saying is that it is so wide that in one important respect, i.e. in the publication of certain matters relating to police activity, the effect of this legislation will be to stifle publication of such matters by the Press.

What has the United Party done in this regard? It has met the hon. the Minister on his own ground by having brought forward during the Committee Stage an amendment which, if it was adopted, would have limited the effect of this legislation to precisely the grounds which the Minister advanced for the acceptance of this Bill, i.e. those police matters relating to the security of the State. That would have been the effect of our amendment. We have accepted the Minister’s good intentions and his assurances that he has brought forward this legislation merely to protect the safety of the State. We have accepted that and have devised an amendment which, if it was accepted, would have done just that. But what was the attitude of the hon. the Minister when we moved this amendment? What was his attitude when he was tested—as my hon. friend next to me remarks? His attitude was a childish one. He became petulant and sulky by saying that because we voted against the second reading, he would not consider our amendment not even on its merits. That was the attitude of the hon. gentleman. He refused right throughout to discuss our amendments on its merits. He merely stated that because of the attitude we had taken up and because he believed that the Official Opposition had no regard for the safety of the State, he would not even consider any amendment that might be put forward. I regret that that was his attitude.

But there is another aspect which I deplore even more. I refer to the fact that the hon. the Minister, not once but at least a dozen times during the debate which has taken place on this Bill so far, accused myself and every other hon. member on this side of the House of having no patriotism and of having no concern for the safety of this country.

And how right he was! [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a matter which can be taken lightly. On the contrary, I take the very strongest exception to the Minister of Justice saying to me and everybody else on this side of the House that we have no concern for the safety of this country. This needs to be said so that we can stop this nonsense once and for all. One does not like talking about one’s own record. This, however, is the time for that to be done. I spent four years of my youth doing what I could to protect the safety of this country in the only way I knew, i.e. to fight for it, and I defy the hon. the Minister to show me a better way in which to do it. And what is more, I fought for it at a time when the hon. gentleman, who attacks us on this score, was spending his time in a manner not conspicuous for the defence and safety of this country. And yet my record, in so far as the last international conflict is concerned, is of no consequence if compared with that of many other hon. members on this side of the House, hon. members who have proved to the utmost possible extent that when it comes to the question of the safety of South Africa, they are prepared to do something about it, and that not merely by talking but by going forward and doing something, by fighting for it. I think I speak for all hon. members on this side when I say that I resent very strongly when anyone, particularly the hon. the Minister, comes along and says that we have no concern for the safety of South Africa. To that I take the strongest possible exception. I think it high time that this sort of nonsense was stopped. Our patriotism stands unblemished. We have proved it. I believe that our record in this respect can stand up favourably when compared with any other record. Let us therefore stop this. It does nobody any good. It offends us mortally while not adding to the reputation of those who level such an accusation against us. It reveals a paucity of argument. Let us therefore rather come back and deal with the merits of this legislation, legislation which is important and difficult. Let us deal with it on its merits and not cast aspersions on the patriotism or the motives of those on the other side, particularly in circumstances which arise with Bills of this kind and particularly also in view of the record of many of us—in fact, the majority of us on this side of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I shall not delay the House very long on this third reading because I have voiced my main objections to this Bill during the second-reading stage. I do not wish to repeat the arguments I advanced at the second reading. I do want to say, however, that I do not intend going in for any of these protestations of patriotism and loyalty because, Sir, I am really sick and tired of the hon. the Minister’s old parrot cry that is heard whenever he introduces a Bill in this House and it is opposed by members on this side of the House, either myself or members of the Opposition. In those circumstances he immediately uses the old and tried argument of accusing everybody either of being sympathetic to sabotage or engaged in subversive activities or at least associating with people who are so engaged. I do not intend even to be bothered to deny these accusations because, quite frankly, I am bored with them. I have listened to the Minister saying these things year after year but I am quite undeterred by his accusations because, as far as I am concerned, these things went out with McCarthy in America. The hon. the Minister is trying tactics which failed there and I am quite sure he intends keeping South Africa …

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

I am replying to accusations which the hon. Minister levelled …

Order! The hon. member is travelling too far and wide to do so. She must come back to the Bill.

The point is, Sir, that the principle which this Bill seeks to introduce constitutes a further widening of the very wide powers which this hon. Minister has over the course of years taken unto himself. In this instance his objective is—and I may say that his protestations regarding the really narrow implications of the Bill do not in fact impress me—to try and silence further opposition in this country and to silence criticism of the actions of, specifically, his security police. This Bill is to all intents and purposes another “silencer”—that is what it is. The Minister already has wide powers under the Defence Act to stop the publication of any matters affecting the defence of South Africa. He has powers under the Prisons Act to stop the publication of any matter which, in his view, incorrectly represents anything relating to a prison matter. He now seeks to widen those powers still further by means of this Bill, a Bill containing undefined clauses having far-reaching consequences, and his excuse for doing so is that the security of the State is at stake and that certain safeguards exist, e.g. that the Attorney-General will have to institute proceedings before anybody can be charged under this legislation. It seems to me to be carrying things very far indeed if one introduces a measure which is so wide that nobody can foresee the implications thereof and thereafter to leave it to the authorities to circumscribe the measure. That, I believe, is carrying things very far. But this is exactly what the hon. the Minister is doing in the case of this Bill.

During the second-reading debate I stated that as far as I was concerned the assurances of the hon. the Minister did not satisfy me. I pointed out that already he possessed wide powers, powers which are further extended by this Bill. Nobody will know in future what he or she may say or publish once this Bill has become law. The fact that it is on the Statute Book will be enough to deter many from criticizing otherwise perfectly ordinary police actions in South Africa. Therefore, for the reasons I have given and because the Minister’s assurances have certainly not satisfied me, I intend voting against the third reading of this measure.

I want, firstly, to draw attention to the attitude adopted by the Government side during the third reading debate on this Bill. We have had four speakers from the Opposition benches, but up to now not one single member of the Government side has stood up to answer the arguments which members on this side have presented against this Bill.

What is there to answer? Nothing!

To suggest, as some members on the other side are now doing by way of interjection, that we have not presented any cogent arguments is really childish.

But there is nothing to answer!

I hope that the hon. member for Ceres, who is so keen to interject, will stand up and answer some of the arguments that we on this side have presented. The hon. member for Standerton and the hon. member for Ceres like to hide themselves behind the contention that we on this side of the House have not presented adequate and convincing arguments against this Bill. However, I am quite sure, Mr. Speaker, that this view will not be shared by any impartial person who may have been listening to this, the third-reading debate. Mr. Speaker, I go so far as to say that the attitude of the members on the Government side during this third-reading debate almost amounts to a contempt of this House. I say this because we do not know what the attitude of the Government is to the matters that we have raised, and indeed we will not know until such time as the hon. the Minister enters the debate to reply at the end, and at that stage we will not have an opportunity to meet any of the arguments presented by the Government against the arguments which we have presented. I must say that this is no way to conduct a debate, particularly not by the Government which has introduced this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) has stated in very strong terms the contempt felt by this side of the House for the way in which the hon. the Minister and other Government members have misrepresented …

Order! The hon. member is going too far. He must withdraw the words “misrepresented” and “contempt”.

I withdraw them and for the word “misrepresented” want to use the word “misconstrued”—the Minister and other members on that side have misconstrued the arguments advanced by this side of the House, particularly when that side is continually making the allegation that, because we have opposed this Bill, therefore we have no concern for the safety of the State. The hon. the Minister in his reply to the second-reading debate; in other words, after we had made our attitude perfectly clear, made the following statement, which appears in Hansard, column 4324—

What a scandalous statement for the hon. the Minister to make after he had heard the attitude of this side of the House! We had made it perfectly clear that we were just as concerned as the Government with the safety of the State.

More so!

We have proved, at a time when the safety of the State was in danger and we were the Government of the country, how very concerned we were. Therefore, Sir, the Minister has no grounds whatsoever for doubting our bona fides. To make a statement like that, under those circumstances is, in my submission, scandalous.

Now, what are the facts, Mr. Speaker? The facts are these: Although this Bill contains six clauses, one amendment only is of any consequence. I refer to the amendment to Section 3 (2) of the main Act, i.e. the Official Secrets Act of 1956. What is the effect of Section 3 (2) as it now reads? What it does is to penalize the communication of information—and other things—relating to munitions of war, provided that that communication is in a manner or for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the Republic. I emphasize that the section as it now reads is restricted to the penalizing of things relating to munitions of war. It is important to note that the term “munitions of war” is clear enough, because that term is defined in the main Act.

What does the Bill now under discussion do? All it does is to add to the existing section the words “or any military or police matter” and the words “publishes it directly or indirectly”. What the Bill thus does is to make it an offence—an additional offence; in other words, additional to the offence of communicating a matter relating to munitions of war. In terms of this Bill it will also be an offence to communicate or publish information relating to any military or police matter … if the communication or publication is made in a manner or for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the Republic. It is perfectly clear, I submit, that that is the principle of the Bill—the principle of the Bill is the addition of a military matter or a police matter into the context of Section 3 (2). Neither a military nor a police matter is defined, although in the main Act there was no difficulty in defining the term “munitions of war”. Well, Sir, perhaps it is unnecessary to define what is meant by the term “military matter”, because it is perfectly clear what a military matter prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State is. But in regard to a police matter the situation is entirely different, and it is entirely different for this reason: A “police matter” can relate to anything to do with the police. It is admitted by both sides of the House, both by the Minister and by ourselves, that it is in the interests of the police and the country generally that, in principle, police matters should be subject to public scrutiny by means of Press reports. In the course of his opening address during the second-reading debate, the Minister said the following, as reported in Hansard, column 4061—

Throughout the second-reading debate, members of that side suggested in their speeches that all this Bill aimed to do was to prohibit the publication of information which could affect the safety of the State.

Well, Mr. Speaker, if that was all this amending Bill did, this side would naturally support the Government, because we are with them in the protection of the safety of the State. But the reason why we object to this Bill, the reason why we have opposed it at every stage, is that the contention that this is all the Bill does, is entirely wrong. That contention is wrong because the amendment makes it an offence to publish information relating to a military or police matter if that publication is in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the State. How is a newspaper editor to know that a police matter which on the fact of it seems to be quite harmless may not be held to be “published in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the State”? As has been pointed out by other members on this side of the House, we have had numerous statements by Government members at various times—and particularly by the hon. the Minister of Justice—to the effect that the way in which, to take one example, the Bultfontein case was published in some of the newspapers was contrary to the interests of the State. We have had statements to the effect that the publication of the names of persons detained, persons held under house arrest, was not in the interests of the State. But those matters, Mr. Speaker, have nothing to do with the safety of the State. I emphasize that those matters can only relate to the interests of the State as opposed to the safety of the State.

Under these circumstances I would have thought that it was perfectly clear to the hon. the Minister and to members on that side that some restriction is required as regards the definition of “police matters”.

We have had the allegation by the hon. the Minister that the National Press Union accepts or is not opposed to this Bill. Will the hon. the Minister deny that since the interview that he had with the National Press Union several of the editors of the large daily English newspapers have come out in opposition to this Bill for one or other reason? Will he also deny that in his presidential address to the South African Society of journalists the president of that society very strongly opposed this Bill? Will the hon. the Minister deny that there is a clear distinction between the National Press Union, which is a body comprised of the managerial staff of the newspapers, and the South African Society of Journalists the members of which are the persons who would be responsible for writing the articles which appear in the newspapers? In the main it appears to be perfectly clear that the editors have, at any rate, had second thoughts on this Bill and no longer support the view of the National Press Union as expressed to the Minister.

The hon. the Minister challenged us during the second reading debate to show our bona fides—to show that we were in fact concerned with the safety of the State but that our only objection to this Bill was that it went further than was necessary for the protection of the safety of the State. That challenge was accepted and met during the committee stage of this Bill. This side of the House moved an amendment to define “police matter” to mean a police matter relating to the internal security of the Republic as provided in paragraph (a) of Section 5 of the Police Act of 1958. What does Section 5 say? Section 5 of the Police Act defines the functions of the South African police and says they will be as follows, inter alia—

1. (a) the preservation of the internal security of the Union;
2. (b) the maintenance of law and order;
3. (c) the investigation of any offence or alleged offence; and
4. (d) the prevention of crime.

As regards (b), (c) and (d), on the face of them, no question of internal security is involved. Those matters relate purely to normal police matters. Our amendment was therefore confined to the first of the functions, namely, the preservation of the internal security of the Union. What were the arguments that the Government members advanced in opposition to this amendment and in justifying their objection to it? First of all, Sir, they said that there were other police functions and that we were limiting it to this one function. The position is perfectly clear. If these other functions, in any particular instance, do in fact concern the internal security of the Republic then, in addition to falling within these other categories, they also fall within the first category and are covered by our amendment. To make myself clear let me take (b), the maintenance of law and order. Normally the maintenance of law and order would have nothing to do with the preservation of the internal security of the Republic. But if the maintenance of law and order related to a matter which did affect the internal security of the Republic then it would fall within the amendment we moved. So all the functions of the police, if they have to do with the internal security of the Republic, would be covered by the amendment we proposed and would, in other words, enable the Minister to meet the situation he wished to meet in preserving the security of the State. I cannot follow therefore why the hon. the Minister was not prepared to accept this amendment.

I go further. The second argument was that this amendment was covered by what followed subsequently in the clause. The argument advanced by the Nationalist members went along these lines: It is not every police matter which is affected by the Clause but only a police matter which is communicated in a manner or for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. That, of course, is perfectly clear. It is only such police matters. But as I pointed out earlier, Sir, there are many police matters which, on the face of them, appear to be unobjectionable but which could be held by the hon. the Minister or by the Commissioner of Police to have been communicated in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the State as opposed to the security of the State.

If the definition of “police matter” is accepted and it is confined to those matters which have to do with internal security, it becomes perfectly clear that the manner of communication is then confined to those police matters which affect internal security. A final argument which was advanced by the hon. the Minister and hon. members on that side of the House in rejecting our amendment was that the Official Secrets Bill had to do only with matters which were secret, officially secret. The hon. the Minister suggested that it would be perfectly clear to an editor and to anyone who had to do with this section what an official secret was and that he would know exactly what matters he could or could not publish. That contention is not correct. Section 3, which is the relevant section of the Official Secrets Act, has three sub-sections. Subsections (1) and (3) are clearly confined to matters which are describable as official secrets. There would therefore have been no difficulty had those been the sections which were the subject of this Bill but that is not the case. Sir. It is sub-section (2) which is the subject of this Bill and this sub-section is not confined to matters which can be described as secrets or official secrets. On the contrary, sub-section (2) states that any person who has information, not official information, not secret information, but any information, relating to a police matter and who communicates it, etc., commits an offence. It is perfectly clear that sub-section (2) is not confined to information of a secret nature. That is perfectly clear. To refer, as the hon. the Minister did, to the long title and to say this Bill is called the Official Secrets Bill and therefore it has to do only with official secrets is nonsense. The hon. the Minister, as Minister of Justice, ought to know that there are many bills in respect of which the official title is misleading; bills which deal with other matters than are suggested by the official title. This is a clear case where the long title is in fact misleading. To suggest that because this is an Official Secrets Bill the persons who have to do with the interpretation of this Section will know that it is only those things which they must not publish is not correct. If that is so then our opposition to this Bill becomes perfectly justified because “police matter” is then so wide that it includes any matter which, although the editor may innocently believe has nothing to do with the interests of the State, the Minister or the Commissioner of Police may, in their opinion, decide that it does affect the interests of the State. It is no argument to suggest, as the hon. the Minister has, that in any event, even though the phrase “police matter” is very wide, the Attorney General is the person who will decide whether or not there will be a prosecution. If there is a transgression of the Act there is an offence. It is no consolation to the person concerned to be told that, if in the opinion of the Attorney General, this is not a serious transgression he will not be prosecuted. Individuals are entitled to know from the law passed by Parliament what the limits are to the offence. They are entitled to know what conduct on their part will result in the commission of an offence; what conduct on their part will not. Under this Bill they are not in that position.

Since the hon. the Minister has rejected completely the very reasonable amendment that we introduced to this Bill we are left with no alternative but to move the same amendment that we did at the second reading, namely “That this Bill be read to-day six months.”

If ever a protest has been called for, Sir, this Bill certainly calls for the strongest protest. When a number of speakers get up on this side of the House to deal with this matter they have every justification in doing so. I will not criticize the Government side for not replying; that is their business, but the attitude of the Government side of the House will be taken into account at the appropriate time.

The hon. the Minister was very anxious to impress upon the House that in introducing, what he called, a new principle into this Bill he had dealt with both military and police matters. He said that was the way in which the principle must be viewed. He said it was a new principle because it dealt with both military and police matters. Unfortunately many of these so-called new principles which are introduced into this House carry with them an appendix. It is that very appendix that we find irksome and which we want to cut out in order to make it a principle acceptable to the Opposition.

When the hon. the Minister replied to the second reading debate it seemed to this side of the House that he would have been quite prepared seriously to discuss a possible amendment to this Bill. In fact, in reading what he said, he indicated very clearly that had the Opposition not adopted what he regarded as a rather stringent approach to the Bill by moving an amendment that the Bill be read this day six months, he might have considered an amendment. It seemed that the hon. the Minister would have adopted a reasonable attitude. It left one with the distinct impression that even the hon. the Minister felt that the contents of this Bill were a little wider than necessary for the purposes for which the Bill had been introduced and that he would be satisfied if he could find some means of bringing the contents of the Bill into a better perspective and limit the purpose for which he intended the Bill. Because he was not satisfied with the means the Opposition had adopted he discarded our amendment; as a matter of fact he almost suggested that he was going to let the Opposition stew in their own juice. It was clearly explained to him that this was a Bill with one clause and that one could not accept a principle at the second reading while the Rules of the House prevented one from altering that principle at a later stage. There was therefore nothing out of the ordinary in this approach on the part of the Opposition despite the fact that the hon. the Minister felt that one could have moved a reasonable amendment.

Another factor which I think the hon. the Minister should explain to us tiffs evening in his reply is the term “interest of the State”. I think he virtually ran away from this aspect of his new principle. Right throughout his introductory speech and in his reply to the second reading he persisted in dealing with the question of the safety of the State. He in fact chided the Opposition that they were not concerned with the safety of the State. He persisted in dealing with this aspect of the safety of the State. When he was pressed at some stage to reply to another matter that had been raised incidentally he tried to relate the question of the interests of the State to the so-called war which he said was spreading round the world the draught of which was beginning to be felt in our country as well. When he dealt with a matter which had been raised with regard to a statement the Commissioner of Police had made in criticizing certain remarks that had been made about the police force and their salaries and that those remarks were not in the interests of the State, the Minister said: “Of course they are not; but the ‘interests of the State’ in that sense has nothing to do with the ‘interests of the State’ in the sense in which the term is used in this Bill.” We should like to know from the hon. the Minister whether he could give us a full definition of “in the interests of the State” when it comes to police matters. We realize the importance of it when it comes to the safety of the State and there we are all with him. After all, Sir, it is the bounden duty of every citizen to ensure the safety of the State. If the hon. the Minister feels that he requires certain protection for the police force in order to ensure the safety of the State then we on this side of the House will not object to it but when he widens the field to cover practically everything which is an every-day occurrence in the life of every citizen he must limit the perspective and the scope of this amending Bill.

The hon. the Minister has stated that the matter is covered by the discretion which rests entirely with the Attorney General in bringing any charges under this particular Bill when it becomes law. He related that discretion to the fact that he had given certain assurances to the N.P.U. with regard to the manner in which the amended portions of the Bill would be made use of when applied in practice. Even in that sense the hon. the Minister cannot bind the Attorney General. There may be changes. We may get other Attorneys General; we may get another Minister; there may be changes in the staff of the Department. I suggest that it is almost impossible that an assurance given in good faith can be binding for all time in this particular type of measure. I feel it is our duty to ensure that we do not have wide powers which incidentally flow from something and which can unfortunately almost restrict the movement and the freedom of the people of the State.

As has been pointed out we are not here to defend the N.P.U. or the attitude they have adopted. This particular amending Bill deals with the actions of any person. It does not only deal with the actions of the Press. The hon. the Minister has talked about publication but it is not only publication in a Press. It is publication by word of mouth; it is publication by a remark made by one individual to another which can become of importance in terms of this particular clause.

Over the years Bills of this nature have tended to circumscribe the movement and freedom of the individual. Our much boasted democracy is beginning to look very shabby indeed when one dissects the import of the legislation that comes before us. Just as a matter of interest to the hon. the Minister I discussed this very point over the week-end with a very prominent citizen of Cape Town. I discussed the grounds on which the Opposition was protesting against this Bill. As a leading industrialist in Cape Town he agreed with me that when it came to the question of the safety of the State he could see no reason why there should be any opposition. But he himself regarded the term “in the interests of the State” as related to information of any nature in respect of police matters as being far too wide. He himself gave me simple examples to indicate how this could affect the daily life of the individual. It has been pointed out—and I would like to stress this again—that it is good for everything to see the light of day. It is good for the citizens of a country to know what is taking place. It is good for the citizens of a country to be aware of what is happening in their country. That is the essence of democracy. Under this Bill the position may arise where only information which is good for people will be published. I do not say the hon. the Minister is going to do it but this Bill leaves it open to that taking place and that is why one has to be so careful in legislating. After all. daily occurrences of accidents, personal and domestic matters, reports on affairs in distant countries overseas, sporting events and so forth are matters which are of such trite concern that it does not really matter one way or another. But things are happening to the freedom of the individual; things are happening in regard to his complying with the law; things are happening in regard to the right of an individual to be tried in open court. All these matters are affected if nothing is allowed to appear in the Press. There are so many facets to this aspect of information not being passed on to the public that it could lead to a position where the people of the country would be unaware of what was taking place. After all, Sir. one of the bases of our democracy is the right to be able to object and to speak up against a system; to voice one’s criticism of this attitude of the Government; to voice one’s criticism of a political party; to voice one’s criticism of what is taking place in the course of the administration of justice or any other matter which is of public interest. Surely one of the bases of our own democratic system is that we must know what is taking place. We must not find ourselves in the unfortunate position when a man can say: “I am not responsible for what has taken place in another town; I do not believe that has happened.”

That happened in Germany.

I do not know where it has happened but I do not want it to happen in South Africa. That is my concern. My concern is that a citizen must know what is happening to his fellow-citizens in other parts of the country. If things are happening to his fellow-citizen which should not happen he should have the right, by knowing it, to raise his voice in protest and to be able to criticize what is taking place. He must have the opportunity either by going to the polls or in any other manner to express himself constitutionally and democratically. He must have the right to register his protest against what has happened. When you have legislation of this nature it is very possible that a great deal of what takes place in a country will not be seen either in the Press or will not be allowed to be repeated by word of mouth because that would be information which might be adjudged to be, insofar as the police are concerned, matters so much in the interests of the State that the person would be culpable under this legislation and found guilty. Sir, can you imagine the psychological effect of this? After all, in a country like South Africa which enjoys such a wonderful measure of freedom, a country where democracy is the very essence of the thinking of the people, it would be wrong to have legislation of this nature. Democracy is something which we have inherited from the two great sections of our community. Both sections of the community have brought with them the heritage of freedom from intolerance, a strong innate sense of justice and a strong sense of the desire for freedom. One does not have to go into the history of the people of South Africa to know that people fled from other countries in order to preserve their freedom of thought, their freedom to choose their own religion and their freedom of expression. If there is any diminution of that particular freedom, then, as a South African I feel that it is our bounden duty to voice our objection to any such diminution of freedom. It is our duty to place on record that we believe there is a possibility of this type of legislation limiting that freedom. In my view it is the duty of a Minister of the State to take cognizance of that and not to say: “I am not prepared to listen to reasoning because I do not like the way in which you oppose this Bill”. I do not think that is a responsible attitude for a Minister of the State to adopt, a Minister who has a much greater responsibility resting on his shoulders than his party. I do not mind the other members of the Government not fighting the cause; that is their business. But the Minister is not fighting a Nationalist Party campaign. He is a responsible Minister of the State and if he thinks there might have been some via media to discuss an amendment I think he should have been big enough to say: “Whilst I decry what you have done I think I can read you a lesson on the Rules; nevertheless it is my duty to discuss a reasoned amendment so that any fear or any danger that the freedom of the individual may be curtailed can be eliminated.” That is the plea I make to the hon. the Minister. He has time, whether now or in the Other Place, to deal with this matter in a much more reasonable manner. The hon. the Minister knows as well as I do that we have a tradition in our country which has imbued the spirit of our people over centuries. Certainly over the last five to ten decades. Over the last 100 years we have set a great example of being a sound, democratic and responsible people.

[Inaudible.]

I am not referring to the gentleman who, like my ancestor Joseph, wears a coat of many colours. That is not relevant in this particular debate. I want to say this to the hon. the Minister: We have a heritage and we have a tradition. I believe that anything which could in any way sully that heritage or tradition should as jealously be guarded against by the hon. the Minister as by members on this side of the House. We are at one in jealously guarding these important institutions in our country. I feel that the Minister should not treat the matter lightly. Let him tell us clearly and unequivocally what he means by this term “in the interests of the State”. He should not quibble with us about the term “the safety of the State”. In that regard we are at one with him. I do not want to repeat what other hon. members have said because evidence is not necessary. As the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) has said many members on this side of the House have served South Africa. South Africa has a very proud record of service from our citizens. De do not need members of Parliament, as the elected representatives of the people, to vouchsafe their standards in protecting the safety of the State. My appeal to the hon. the Minister is to adopt a reasonable attitude as a good South African. We expect that of him as we expect it of ourselves.

I listened attentively to the arguments advanced by hon. members opposite, but not because those arguments were new. We had the same arguments during the second reading, and we had precisely the same arguments because the Bill really consists of only one clause and contains only one principle, from the nature of the matter in the Committee Stage, and now we have again had the same arguments in the third reading. I therefore say that it is not for that reason that I listened attentively to hon. members opposite, but I was fascinated to see how those hon. members tried to get out of their difficulty. That is what interested me, and I will illustrate it for hon. members by reference to the speech of the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller), who has just resumed his seat, and I call the House to witness that when we commenced discussing this Bill—I am now dealing only with the police aspect—everything in connection with police matters was obscure and vague and unacceptable. Everything was so unacceptable to hon. members opposite that they moved the strongest amendment one can move in terms of the parliamentary rules, viz. that the Bill be read to-day six months. Then the Bill was so unacceptable that they did not want to have anything more to do with it at all; then they wanted to kill the Bill because the words “police matters which may be to the detriment of the safety and the interests of the State” were so objectionable to them that they moved this amendment.

But what do I now infer from the speech of the hon. member for Florida? I infer from it that there is really only one matter to which they now object, and that is only theword “interest”. They do not know what the word “interest” means. That is all they have against the Bill. They are now satisfied with “police matters”. That does not worry the hon. member for Florida. They do not quarrel with the words “safety of the State” in so far as police matters are concerned. That does not worry them either. All that now worries the hon. member for Florida is that they still do not understand the meaning of the word “interest”. We have come far in the course of these three stages through which the Bill has passed, and now I want to make a prediction. We have now again heard ad nauseum from hon. members opposite about the freedom of the individual which is being affected, about the abuses which will flow from this Bill, of the misuse, in so far as the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) is concerned, which I will now make of the powers granted to me by this Bill. In fact, the hon. member went further and accused me of abusing my powers in every respect. I want to tell the hon. member that she will have the opportunity, when my Vote is under discussion, to prove what she said. I have taken action against many people. In terms of the legislation, it is my duty to do so. All I now want from the hon. member for Houghton, while I am on this point, is that she should be so friendly, seeing that I have now dealt with numerous cases, as to tell me beforehand in respect of which cases I have abused my powers. Then I can have the relevant files made available, because I do not have them with me, and then I challenge the hon. member to attack me at the appropriate time. Hitherto we have heard nothing about that during this Session.

I also want to predict that in spite of all the pious words of the hon. member for Florida and others, we shall never hear about it again. We shall pass this Bill but we will never again hear from hon. members opposite. They will not come back to this House and say that I abused my powers or that I prosecuted a man whom I should not have prosecuted. Surely we have heard this story before. It is not a new story. Hon. members opposite have been accusing me for years already of curtailing the freedom of the individual and of taking powers which we want to abuse. For how many years have hon. members opposite not been raising bogies in respect of this matter, and then we simply never hear about it again? What do hon. members achieve when they advance this type of argument? I want to go further and ask hon. members whom they are protecting, or whom they are trying to protect in this regard? I know of no single member of the United Party who will be prosecuted in terms of this Act. In all the years I have been Minister of Justice—and I say it with a full sense of responsibility—it was not necessary for me to take action against a single member of the United Party. As I stand here I have no reason at all for believing or expecting that I shall have to take action against a single member of the Opposition. And they know it. Or do they not trust their own people in that regard? Surely they know it, and seeing that they know it as far as their own people are concerned, and have had experience of their own people in recent years, I have the right to ask the hon. member for Florida and others who spoke like them: On whose behalf are they speaking in this regard? They are not speaking on behalf of their own people.

We are discussing principles.

If the hon. member says that they are discussing principles, I can reply to that. Often it appears to me as if that is a strange concept to some hon. members opposite. The hon. member for Florida pretended that he had just discovered a truth when he said “even the Minister thought that the Bill was wider than is necessary”. The hon. member did not make a discovery. Surely it is an admission I made right in the beginning when I introduced the Bill, and I told the House so very clearly and frankly. It is so.T cannot argue it away. Nor is it necessary for me to try to hide that this is so. Surely I said right from the beginning that this was the position when I told the whole story about the National Press Union in this regard. But if hon. members had listened they would also have heard me telling them that all safety legislation of all countries, in order to be on the safe side, necessarily has to go further than appears to be absolutely necessary at the time. One must rather—and I have already said so—say too much in such an Act than too little, because the moment one says too little and one needs those powers, it is too late. If hon. members would just make a study of the British legislation or that of any other country they would see that precisely the same standpoint is adopted there. I shall come back in a moment to the point as to why in our case police matters have become so important. I have already dealt with it but I will repeat it.

The hon. member for Florida asked me to say something about the safety aspect of this Bill. If the hon. member had gone into the history of the British Official Secrets Act, he would know that these words “safety” and “interest” are coupled in every section of that Act. That has been so right from the beginning; ever since the very early years these two words have stood together. And the hon. Member surely knows that I explained to him that the one is the corollary of the other. At any given moment one may have a case before one where a matter does not immediately affect the safety of the State, or is important to the safety of the State, but may harm the interests of the State from the point of view of security. I gave an example. I do not intend repeating it. I have discussed this matter with the law advisers and they assure me that in no single bit of safety legislation of which they have knowledge are those two words not coupled, and the whole basis of all the decisions given in regard to this matter is that this “interest” referred to here is not the interest which one normally refers to as a layman in respect of one’s party or one’s person or one’s city or one’s town or one’s country or one’s state. It is an interest which goes much deeper than that. It is a security interest, and not an interest in the other respect that it only harms one or that propaganda is made against one. It is an interest which in fact endangers one’s continued existence. That is the meaning and the content that word has in all security legislation. Why it is now suddenly inexplicable and unintelligible here in South Africa to hon. members opposite I do not know. Why now advance the argument ad nauseum that I think, or the Commissioner of Police thinks, that this or that matter is not in the interest of the State? Why use such arguments? What I or the Commissioner of Police think in this regard is not relevant at all. The court is concerned here. It is not the Commissioner or I who decide the case. The court has to decide whether the interest and safety of the State has been harmed. It is not the commissioner or I who have to decide that. We can talk about it as much as we like, and hon. members opposite may talk about it as much as they like, but nobody will take any notice of it, least of all the court. Now why drag this in as an argument?

It was said.

I did not say it. I was replying to the argument which came from the opposite side of the House, and I shall come in a minute to the Bultfontein case where it originally came from.

Then we come to the hon. member for Durban (Musgrave) (Mr. Hourquebie). The hon. member asked whether I was aware that certain newspapers had written against this clause. I am aware that an article appeared in the Cape Argus. I have read no other article, but I will readily admit that there may have been such articles. But all I in fact know is that the people who approached me in regard to this matter were the N.P.U., and hon. members are now trying in vain to evade this by saying that it was the management which was represented on that delegation, because the people who interviewed me were the editors of the Burger, the Cape Times and the Argus, as well as one member of the executive of the N.P.U., and with the best will in the world I cannot understand why hon. members opposite are now so concerned about the newspapers whereas the newspapers themselves are not concerned. The hon. member for Houghton may now correct me if I am wrong; I did not see the articles to which she referred, but what I am prepared to say, judging from the article which appeared in the Argus, is that those newspapers only went so far as to say that this thing goes too far, that it is too wide, and that they are not opposed to it in principle, but that it would be a good thing if a narrower definition could be found. Is that correct?

You did not do so.

That is as far as these people went, but I never read in any newspaper nor did I hear anywhere that it was said that the newspapers would now not know what they could publish. Nor did I see in a single report that it was said that we would now restrict the freedom of the Press in this way or that we were destroying the freedom of the Press in South Africa. And that is what hon. members opposite said. That is what they intimated. Whom must I now take notice of? From the nature of the matter I read the Cape Town newspapers, and I know from experience that if the freedom of the Press is affected the first newspaper which will tell me so is the Cape Times, but I did not at any time read in the Cape Times that they said I was restricting the freedom of the Press or that I was killing the freedom of the Press. Nor did I read it in the Argus anywhere. But now hon. members opposite, and particularly the hon. member for Musgrave, intimate that I am now slowly but surely killing Press freedom in South Africa. The hon. member for Houghton went further and said that I was busy “silencing the Opposition in this country”.

Not silencing it.

Yes, I noted down the words used by the hon. member. She used the word “silence” in that regard.

Yes.

But surely the hon. member knows that it is not necessary for me to silence the Opposition. In fact, it is not in the interests of my party to silence the Opposition. It is in my party’s interest to allow the Opposition to talk as much as possible.

Particularly if Japie talks.

The hon. member for Vereeniging is quite correct. To tell the truth, one should give the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) something to make him continue talking and talk a lot. What do we achieve by it? I ask the hon. member for Houghton and other hon. members who used that argument. The hon. member surely knows that this matter has nothing to do with silencing or not silencing the Opposition. Surely the hon. member knows that it has absolutely nothing to do with criticism. The hon. member surely knows that even if this Bill is passed by the House ten times, one can express just as much criticism as one wishes.

And police matters?

Yes, one can criticize even defence matters as much as one likes. Even though there should be a war in progress, one may say, except if there are other emergency regulations, such as hon. members opposite passed during the last war, in terms of this legislation that the soldiers fought badly; one may say that they were badly led and one may say many other things and voice criticism if one loses a battle, and all that has nothing to do with this Bill. One may say that the soldiers are paid too little, that they do not have enough blankets, that they do not get enough food and that their morale is bad. One can say all those things when criticizing a battle which was lost. If one can do that in war-time, how much more freely can one do it in peace-time!

We have not yet experienced a war under you.

The hon. member is quite correct.

Order! The hon. the Minister should not allow himself to be diverted by interjections.

I thank you, Sir. The hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) asked what else the Opposition could do now than say that it goes too far? I have never yet blamed the Opposition for saying that it goes too far. My objection to the Opposition is really that they did not say that. My objection to them is that they adopted the standpoint they adopted at the second reading. That was what I reproached the Opposition for, and they are still trying to get out of that predicament, and that is why numerous speakers had to talk to-night for no other reason than to try to exonerate the Opposition from the mistake they made in the first instance. My reproach to the Opposition was particularly that if they had been bona fide in regard to this matter-they would not have adopted the standpoint that the Bill be read this day six months; then they would have got up and said, as the hon. member for Florida has now said in his speech: “We have no objection to ‘police matters affecting the safety of the State’. We object to ‘police matters detrimental to the interests of the State’, because we do not know what ‘interest’ means.” Then they could either have supported the Bill or not, but they could have asked for it to be explained to them. Then we could have met one another on a reasonable footing and we could have argued the matter out.

The hon. member for Zululand as well as the hon. member for Durban (North) saw fit to make a personal attack on me in this regard. I did not make any personal attack on anybody opposite. I criticized the Opposition because their course of action was wrong, and I will do so again to-night. But let me now tell those hon. members very clearly, seeing that they have made these personal attacks on me by referring to my past, that I have never, nor do I intend doing so to-night or at any time in the future, run away from my past. What is more, I have never yet tried to hide it. My past in so far as that is concerned has been an open book ever since I entered politics and came into this House, until to-day. There is not a single person who does not know the details of it. Let me also tell the hon. member for Durban (North) that I am not ashamed of my past. I also want to tell him, as I have done before, that according to the light I had, if the same conditions should arise again, I hope that I will be given the grace again to have the courage of my convictions. I am just repeating what I have said in this House on a previous occasion. But I want to state quite clearly that while I am not ashamed of my past, hon. members opposite have much to be ashamed of in regard to what has happened in recent years. Where would we have been if I had heeded to the pious words of hon. members opposite?

Just where we are now.

Where would we have been if I had taken the advice of hon. members opposite? I want to go further. Hon. members may now become angry if they like. Where would we have been if I had been as reckless in regard to these security matters as the Opposition has been for the last few years?

I again want to say clearly that this Bill has nothing to do with formal police matters. The hon. member for Durban (North) has now again referred to the Bultfontein case and the fact that I, correctly, at the time objected to the way in which certain newspapers dealt with the matter. Has the hon. member sat down and made an analysis of how this can be brought within the scope of this Bill, even though one wants to do so? There was a court case because certain people did wrong things. We know of the unsavoury events that took place and their consequences. It was general knowledge and no single newspaper could therefore be prosecuted for publishing it. And now tell me how on earth one can allege that if one makes propaganda from an incident which is common knowledge and known to the whole world, that will bring one within the scope of this Bill in any way? I ask that of the hon. member for Durban (North) who is a lawyer.

That was the allegation from your side.

No, with respect, the hon. member either did not follow it or he did not understand it. We are dealing here with the question of whether one has something in one’s possession, whether one has information at one’s disposal. Furthermore, one must be in possession of something specifically mentioned in the Bill. The only thing which is not specific is information which one has in one’s possession, and that information, or any specific thing mentioned in the Bill (sketch, plan, model, object, note, document or information) are the things one must have and of which one is guilty. Now how on earth can one be guilty in terms of this Bill if one makes propaganda from a public incident, whether that propaganda is good or bad? Surely it is quite impossible.

I have tried to explain to hon. members that police matters have to be included because there is hardly any difference in the situation in which South Africa has found herself just recently between an actual war and police action. Therefore it has become necessary for police matters to be given the same protection as military matters, because the police are the people who have to fight the cold war until such time as the military must take over, and God forbid that this should ever become necessary. Have those hon. members not yet learned a lesson in regard to what went on in South Africa in recent years? Do they not realize that what we had to cope with in the first instance was the actions of half-trained and often of untrained people who committed violence and sabotage? Do they not realize that the second phase then came, when we had to cope with better-trained people, the White communists and others who became the leaders of those organizations? And do the hon. members not realize—surely they are not blind to what is going on—that the third phase with which we will have to deal will be the efforts of fully trained people who have been trained in Africa and elsewhere to commit sabotage? Do they not realize that this is what we will eventually be faced with?

Now I want to tell hon. members that they can vote just as they like, and they can make as much propaganda as they like. But as long as I have to bear the responsibility on behalf of this Government, not only to this Parliament but to our people, I shall do my duty to close up all possible loopholes. Hon. members should understand that clearly now. And to attack me personally, or to drag in my past, because hon. members now have a guilty conscience about their actions in the past, will not deter me in the slightest from performing my duty. And if hon. members now envisage that still further legislation will be passed to assist in this regard, then they are quite correct. It will still come. It will come as often as it may be necessary. As long as I bear this responsibility I intend taking the necessary measures to perform my duties to the best of my ability, and this Government will not hesitate for a moment to take the necessary powers to combat those violent elements. I want to repeat what I said on a former occasion. If in that process we enjoy the support of the Opposition we shall be very glad and we shall be grateful for it, but if we do not get it we will nevertheless continue, in spite of the amendments moved by the Opposition.

Question put: That the word “now” stand part of the motion, Upon which the House divided:

Tellers: W. H. Faurie and H. J. van Wyk.

Tellers: A. Hopewell and T. G. Hughes.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to and Bill read a third time.

There is an amendment standing in the name of the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker). This is the definition clause of the Bill. The difference between this definition clause and the definition clauses one finds in most Bills is that it does not provide any definition of what is to be defined. A game of chance is defined as “a game of chance includes any game which the Minister may from time to time by notice in the Gazette declare to be a game of chance”. So from this definition one does not know what a game of chance is. The Minister may, by notice in the Gazette, determine that anything is a game of chance, like rugby in Ireland or Scotland. A lottery is then defined, and from line 8 to line 16 there is a definition of a lottery. I must say that the definition we find here in sub-paragraph (ii) is a definition of a lottery as this term has been understood in the law and by the public, but it then goes on to say that it also includes any scheme, arrangement, system, plan or device which the Minister may from time to time by notice in the Gazette declare to be a lottery. One might add at the end of this, without changing the meaning of it, “whether in fact it is a game of chance as properly understood or not”. Then it would still have exactly the same meaning. In other words, we have here two so-called definitions of a game of chance, which we are prohibiting. We are prohibiting all games of chance and all lotteries. If one were to think of some scheme for raising money for charitable purposes, or for any purposes whatever, one would look at this Bill and one would not know whether the scheme in the middle of its operation might suddenly find itself subject to a notice by the Minister in the Gazette.

Are you dissatisfied with the existing definition?

There is no definition. If the hon. member for Ceres means the definition of “lottery” as it stands, then I am satisfied. I am satisfied that the definition of a lottery up to line 16, up to the word “chance” in that line, is a proper definition of a lottery. Does the hon. member not agree that that is a proper definition?

I am talking about the existing definition.

We are not being asked now to talk about what the definition was in 1927. We are being asked whether we agree with this definition. I say that up to the point where the definition ends I am satisfied.

Is the hon. member for Ceres satisfied? If he is, he will support our amendment. As far as a game of chance is concerned, the definition says that a game of chance includes any game which the Minister may from time to time declare to be a game of chance, so that the Minister must have in mind that a game of chance has already been defined. A game of chance has a meaning in our law. It is a game in which chance is the predominating feature as opposed to skill. There are many instances of this. I remember that there was a case in regard to these one-armed bandits which the Minister will say are games of chance, and I agree that they probably are games of chance. But on one occasion someone was charged with having one of these instruments and he said it was a game of skill, and the magistrate was asked to adjudicate upon this. They brought the machine into court, and the magistrate was asked to try it. He was told what to do. You put your coin in and pull the one arm and there were three windows which spun and you had to get three lemons or three strawberries or whatever they were, and you could, by pressing the levers on this thing, if you could see the wheels passing, get three lemons and hit the jackpot. The magistrate went down and pulled the lever and all the wheels spun and he touched all the buttons and got three lemons. I might say that when he got the three lemons the coins flowed into the well of the court. He went back to the Bench and pronounced that this instrument was without any doubt a game of skill. This is the essential difference between a game of chance and a legal game. Our courts are always called upon to determine, and surely the courts are the best judges of this. The courts decide what we cannot decide in this Committee. We cannot make a law here which has regard to every circumstance which we can possibly envisage for the future, but we can give the courts a guiding principle, the age-old principle of a game in which skill predominates, and chance does not predominate, and the courts can then in even case work it out. I hope the Minister will accept the amendment which I now move—

Then we will have a definition of a game of chance and of a lottery. I should like to say to the Minister that the definition he has is a good definition of a lottery, and the hon. member for Ceres agrees with me subconsciously.

I would defer to the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. S. L. Muller) if he wishes to speak because I do not propose to try to sing a duet with him, as he tried to do with the hon. member for Durban (North). I do not think he has a voice that would match mine. It would be easy to illustrate the fact that the amendment is necessary by showing how far the remainder of that sub-clause already goes in regard to the definition of a lottery. I am going to read a statement which, while I have left out a few words, I have not invented, and I will then amplify it to show just what that statement was intended to mean and I will then ask the Minister or the hon. member for Ceres whether this statement does not in fact describe a lottery. Subject to the deletion of four words it reads as follows: “The remaining applications are decided by the drawing of lots and-those who are unsuccessful in obtaining … on that day, whether they applied or not, are given preference at the next.” Does the hon. member for Ceres know where it comes from?

I have a shrewd idea.

I shall be glad if the hon. member will get up and tell the Committee where it comes from. Obviously he has no idea of the lotteries and games of chance; he always back a certainty, as I have read in the Press. Sir, this comes from a publication called “House of Assembly: Members’ emoluments and general facilities”, and all I have left out, with great respect to Mr. Speaker under whose authority this is published, and the Secretary to the House of Assembly, who has subscribed to this document, are four words. In its proper context it reads as follows. It deals with the allocation of tables for lunch on the opening day of Parliament, and then it says—

That means at the next lottery. I want to ask, with great respect to those who talk about the evils of a lottery—and I have heard the Minister quite recently telling the House about the evils of a lottery and games of chance, which apparently he equates with what he calles “spykertafels”, for reasons of his own; obviously it should be “speldtafels”—but I want to know from these hon. gentlemen whether they do not agree that if a lottery is good enough for this hon. House at the head of which stands Mr. Speaker—a very estimable gentleman, and nobody would suggest that he would be a party to anything evil—why it is that they cannot agree that there is not anything as evil as they suggest in every kind of lottery they can think of. There are times and occasions when a lottery, as they well know, can be perfectly innocent and in fact apparently even necessary under the rules of this House. And there are times when a game of chance can be equally innocent and necessary, like the chance one takes in coming into this House. [Interjection.] Therefore I believe that the amendment moved on behalf of the hon. member for Germiston (District) is eminently reasonable, and I should like to hear at least one hon. member opposite tell us why it is not reasonable and acceptable.

Hon. members opposite are just talking because they feel it is their duty to talk, but the arguments they have advanced in favour of the amendment they have now moved and the definition of a lottery or a game of chance are so hollow that one really cannot take them seriously. If a rugby team goes on to the field and tosses to decide on which side it should kick off, does the hon. member for Hospital want to tell me that is a lottery in terms of this Act and that it is a contravention? If two cricket teams go on to the field and toss a coin, is that the same thing as the criminal contravention for which provision is made in this Act?

Is that not a reason why we should have a definition?

The fact of the matter is that that sort of thing is not the contravention described in this Act, nor those examples which the hon. member gave. If we look at the definition of a lottery we see in line 23 that a prize must be won, and without that it is not a lottery. Monetary gain must be involved. If one looks at the definition of a game of chance and one reads it together with Clause 6, one sees that it only becomes a criminal offence if something is wagered. Without anything being wagered it is not a criminal offence. How can the hon. member for Hospital now make such a noise about nothing? But the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) has attacked the definition of a game of chance and a lottery and he has moved an amendment. We have already discussed the matter in the second reading and it is hardly necessary to do so again. I ask the hon. member whether he was dissatisfied with the existing definition which one finds in Act No. 5 of 1939. There one sees that a lottery or a game of chance are even more widely defined than here. I do not want to weary the Committee with it.

I think you should read it for the sake of the record.

I will read it. If one looks at Act 5 of 1939, one sees that the Minister of Justice or any other Minister to whom the Governor-General entrusts the implementation of this Act may declare by notice in the Gazette—

1. (a) that any person who within the Union allows any person to use or operate, or exposes for use or operation by any person, any particular pin-table, machine or contrivance, named or described in the notice, or any pin-table, machine or contrivance of a make or type, so named or described, shall be deemed to conduct a lottery.

In other words, the Minister may by notice in the Gazette describe anything and say it is a lottery. Then it continues in sub-paragraph (b)—

It is not only a machine or contrivance, but also any game which the Minister may declare to be a lottery. I now ask the hon. member for Durban (North) to tell me whether this definition we have in the Bill before us in any way goes further than the existing definition of a lottery or game of chance; and if it does not go further the hon. member must tell me that he is dissatisfied with the existing definition of a lottery, which was not made by this Government but by the United Party Government. If he says he is dissatisfied we can argue the matter, but we said previously that it was not the intention here to create a new definition of a game of chance or a lottery. We are satisfied with the existing definition, which is their creation. The hon. member asked whether I was satisfied with the existing definition. I am. The hon. members now want to change the definition because they feel it incumbent upon them to talk about the matter.

Before I hand the hon. member for Ceres over to the hon. member for Hospital again, I want to say that he has raised a point which I should answer. It is that Act 5 of 1939 is not the same thing at all as the definition of “lottery” contained in this Bill. The Minister knows this. This Bill distinguishes between a game of chance and a lottery. The 1939 Act really makes no distinction. It seems to confuse a game of chance with a lottery, but the hon. member for Ceres wants to retain that definition. The Minister must make up his mind. He has introduced a Bill in which he distinguishes between a game of chance, a lottery and a pin-table, and I have difficulty with this sort of wording. In the second reading the Minister thumped the table and said he would get rid of all the pin-tables of South Africa and he referred to the great evil of the pin-table. I do not know why the Minister with all his strength has not put a clause in the Bill saying that all pin-tables are illegal. But I will tell you why he has not done it. Sir. It is because it will be very difficult for him to define what a pin-table is.

You had the same trouble in 1939.

Yes, but then we did not try to distinguish between a game of chance and a lottery, as this Bill does. Look at the definition of a lottery. It says that a lottery is all sorts of things and then it says “without reference to the happening of any uncertain event other than the result of the application for use of such lot, dice or other method of chance …”. Why was that put in? I asked the hon. member for Ceres. It is put in to distinguish this from a game of chance, which is something different from a lottery. What the 1939 Act says is something quite different. It says that any person who allows another person to use or operate, or exposes for use or operation by any person, any particular pin-table, machine or contrivance, named or described in the notice, or any pin-table, machine or contrivance of a make or type so named or described shall be deemed to conduct a lottery.

In terms of the next clause, a game of chance is also a lottery.

Then why distinguish in the definition clause between a game of chance and a lottery? I agree that they are two separate things. [Interjections.] The Minister is not going to determine that something is a game of chance which is in effect a lottery, because the Minister’s definition of a lottery is something different from the definition in the 1939 Act. That is the question I want to put to the hon. member for Ceres. Is there not a difference between the conception of a lottery in the 1939 Act? The definition there refers to things like one-armed bandits. There is the ejusdem generis rule. Whatever the Minister by proclamation declares to be a similar contrivance must be something akin to a pin-table, machine or contrivance. It is a one-armed bandit or a pin-table. That is the first question. The second question I want to ask the hon. member is whether his children do not play a game called bagatelle? It is a game you can buy in any of the toyshops, in which there is a steel ball and a spring and you pull the spring back and shoot the ball. I hope that after this Bill is passed the hon. member will not allow his children to play this game, because it is a pin-table; it is a game of skill or a game of chance, depending on what the instrument itself is. The game of bagatelle indicates the nonsense of what the Minister is trying to do now. He is going to examine every contrivance that comes on the market and he will say it is a game of chance; he will not say it is a lottery, and that is why it is different from the 1939 Act. The hon. member for Pinelands suggests that perhaps the hon. member’s golf is also a game of chance, but as time is getting on I will now conclude my argument in order to give the hon. member for Hospital another chance.

After that introduction, I cannot fail to address myself to the hon. Member for Ceres. If I have achieved nothing else, I have at least lured him into this debate. He was not going to say a word, originally. It may be that in my second attempt I may lure the Minister of Transport into the debate.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the clause.

I want to come back to the clause to show how necessary it is to accept the amendment we have moved. I recall, and I think it is relevant to remind the Committee of it, that when the Minister introduced the Bill he said it would enable everyone to know precisely what is or what is not gambling, and he emphasized the word “precisely”. I ask you, Sir, whether you can reasonably say, on reading Clause 1, that any person will know precisely what is or what is not gambling. In the first ten minutes of discussion in the Committee Stage we have heard the hon. member for Ceres, in dealing with the difference between a lottery and a game of chance, giving two definitions of each one of those two aspects of gambling. Admittedly you may say that gambling occurs in both cases, but he himself, in trying to deny the argument of the hon. member for Durban (North), will find when he reads his Hansard, that he gave two definitions of a lottery and two definitions of a game of chance. Now, what kind of precision are you going to get, therefore, unless you at least amend the clause in the way we suggest? Will you get the precise definition that the Minister apparently had in mind when he said that experience has shown that the law on gambling cannot be applied unless he has certain powers—and he then went on to discuss the 1860 Act which gave the Minister certain powers? Apparently this particular definition is designed to bring up to date the 1860 definition of gambling. Sir, you may think that in the last 105 years we have progressed from the status of a Crown colony to an independent and sovereign Republic, but apparently this is not so. We have to go back to colonial times, and to listen to the Minister and the hon. member for Ceres arguing about the difference between a lottery and a game of chance and then put them together in sub-section (2), and then resisting the very reasonable argument that at least the position could be improved by the amendment we moved. I hope that the hon. member for Ceres will take another bite at the lottery cherry.

Is not your objection that the Minister may decide by proclamation what a lottery is?

Yes, that is the preliminary objection as far as I am concerned because the Minister, like any other human being, may apply his mind and come to a wrong conclusion as to what is or is not a lottery or game of chance. This is a genuine fear which I think the public is entitled to have, especially if someone takes office who may not be as expert in these matters as the present Minister. What is more—let us assume the present Minister becomes Prime Minister and the hon. member for Ceres becomes the Minister of Justice. Can you imagine the definition of a lottery or a game of chance he will give? I shudder to think of it. So I hope that in the few minutes which I shall leave him, the hon. member for Ceres will take another bit at the cherry and will again tell us why and how he believes that this is a reasonable definition as it now stands, and why our amendment does not improve the situation.

I do not think it is necessary for me to say why I cannot accept the amendment. I cannot accept it for the simple reason advanced by the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. S. L. Muller) when he quoted from the 1939 Act. It is true that the 1939 Act is confused in regard to a game of chance and a lottery. In some places they tried to separate the two and then again they linked them up as if it were one concept. All we are trying to do now is to separate the two properly, because we are dealing with two different matters. But the fact is that just as in 1939 the then Minister of Justice, General Smuts, said it was impossible to combat this evil if the Minister was not granted that power, so the position is now. In 1939 Parliament, dominated by the United Party, was prepared not only to give this power to the Minister of Justice but to any Minister, and whether the Departments of the other Ministers were able to deal with the matter or not made no difference, but they could determine what a lottery or a game of chance was. Now we give a definition here. It is not necessary to define a game of chance. We have the decisions of our courts which determine what is a game of chance and what is not. But it is necessary, just as it was necessary in 1939. I said that I was introducing no new principles; that I was following the legal lines laid down in the previous Acts, and just as it was necessary in 1939 to give the Minister additional powers, so it is necessary now also, and even more so, because since 1939 people have become much more inventive than they were then and they have discovered many other ways of gambling than there were in 1939. If it was necessary for the Minister of Justice to have such powers in 1939, then it is much more necessary in 1965.

But we go further in regard to the definition of a lottery, and we give a definition which is much more detailed than that contained in any previous Act. Therefore I can say with justification that the law is now much clearer than it was before. We go much further out of our way to give a definition, but for the same reasons that it was necessary to grant powers to the Minister in 1939, it is also necessary to grant them to him now. For those reasons I regret that I cannot accept the amendment.

Amendments put and negatived (Official Opposition dissenting).

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to. Clause 2 put.

Business interrupted to report progress.

House Resumed:

Progress reported.